The Only Lovers Left Alive
by iminyjo
Summary: Life for former United Nations Investigator Michonne Philippe seemed content. But complication finds her again one seemingly normal morning when the city suddenly erupts into chaos. Michonne and UN Soldier Rick Grimes are called upon by their former boss, U.N. Deputy Secretary General Hershel Greene to lead a worldwide search for the source of the infection before it's too late.
1. Chapter 1

***Author's Note***

Hi there! First off, thank you, thank you, thank you for taking a moment to check this out! I know you have a multitude of other works you could be reading so I appreciate you entrusting me with your time and attention.

So, a little housekeeping beforehand. This story that you are about to read is not completely mine. It actually started life as an AU Richonne writing prompt posted by OhMyJinkies on Tumblr. It was so interesting that instead of doing my usual and waiting for someone else to write the story, I decided to tackle it myself. This, that you are about to read, is the end result. That said, any similarity to existing works (other than AMC's The Walking Dead, Max Brooks' book World War Z, Brad Pitt's film of the same name and/or Jinkies' prompt) are entirely coincidental and unintentional.

Please note: Though this is not technically a completed work, it is almost done and there was an outline. It has only been serialized here for your enjoyment. Any questions, comments or suggestions (besides of the grammatical variety), while absolutely welcome, will not alter the course of this story. Which for the most part, has already been written and beta'd (by the astonishing blacklitchick). So comment, comment, comment please but don't expect something you suggested in Chapter 3 to happen in Chapter 4 (unless you're inside my head and/or we think alike). Just sayin'.

Please also note, this story was conceived of and begun *before* the start of Season 7. Meaning, though I knew which actors were cast as which new characters and (although I'm not a GN reader) I knew what certain people were *supposed to* look like (ie. ethnicity, hair color etc.) and their characterizations, I felt far freer to imagine people as *I* saw fit for my story. There are shades of Season 7 in the story, no doubt, but they are altogether different creatures. So, fair warning - some people will not look or act as you've seen them on the show. Please, please, don't bother commenting that xyz doesn't look (or act) like s/he did on the show or in the comix. Or if you do, understand that I will respond (or not) to those messages/comments at my discretion. Just bear in mind that this is an AU story...and enjoy!

 ***UPDATES: MONDAYS AND WEDNESDAYS***

2011

Kisangani, Democratic Republic of Congo

 _She's trembling._

Rick Grimes was watching her closely. He _always_ watched her closely. And in the over seven years he'd known her, he had never seen her like that. _Unnerved_. _Out of sorts_. Yes, there were times when a drop in temperature produced a slight shiver or a gruesome scene caused her shoulders to roll back. But now as she stood in the corner, Michonne Philippe's body was shaking uncontrollably.

"I'm okay." Michonne whispered, apparently reading the concern on his face as they stood side-by-side.

"You sure?" He asked doubting her words greatly.

She looked at him briefly and nodded before turning back toward the man standing in front of them.

 _Maybe he should have taken her straight to the infirmary?_

For the past 10 hours they had been, as they often were, attached at the hip. He just assumed she'd want to stay with him. He, for damn sure, wanted to keep an eye on her. He'd already looked her over from head to toe. After confirming that though she was splattered with blood, only some smatterings on her face were her own, he presumed to keep her with him. Though the shaking did worry him. It was pure shock. He'd seen it before. And shock didn't need a bullet hole to start systematically shutting down her bodily functions until it killed her.

"Captain Grimes? Richard?" Brigadier General Fournier said in his heavy French accent, clearing his throat just as Rick turned back to face him. Rick looked at the man as if he'd only recently turned up in the room.

 _Where was he?_

Rick had been in the middle of his after-action report. Literally mid-sentence when he stopped to look at Michonne – _he was distracted._ Rick's feelings and attentions were going in a million different directions; all vying for his undivided attention. Rationally, he knew Brig. Gen. Fournier should be his primary concern, but he wasn't. _Michonne was._ Making sure she was okay was the first and most crucial of his many vital concerns at that moment.

Fortunately, though Matheo Fournier was a soldier, he was a man first. "Richard. This can wait a few minutes. Get her to Dr. Lissouba and then come back, we can –"

"I'm fine." Michonne cut him off firmly. "Just…get on with it."

Both men looked at her stunned. She appeared to be falling apart but the steel in her tone suggested otherwise. The two men shared another look then focused on Michonne again. Though the shaking hadn't ceased, while still covered in blood, sporting a badly split lip and an increasingly swelling jaw, there could be no doubt from her words that Michonne wasn't going anywhere until Rick's report was finished.

"I'm sorry Matt, where was I?" Rick said distractedly. He could pretend all he wanted, but he wasn't doing much better himself. His right eye was rapidly closing down on him and the bandage Michonne had hastily applied to his shoulder in the jeep was beginning to seep again. He was pretty sure the droplets of his blood that were running down his arm would soon begin staining Matt's hardwood floor.

" _Bien d'accord_ ," Brig. Gen. Fournier conceded with a shrug. "You and Lieutenant Walsh were exchanging fire with M23 forces?" He prompted Rick.

Rick nodded, launching back into the brutal events of the past 18 hours. Periodically, he looked over at Michonne and saw she stood rigidly off to his side. Her eyes fixed on a spot somewhere over Matt's left shoulder but close enough in his general direction as to not attract attention. And she kept one hand solemnly placed over her heart as if she were attesting to the veracity of Rick's words, which was ironic, considering half of them were lies.

 _Clusterfuck was too genteel a word for what had just happened._

Fortunately for them, they were the only two left alive to tell the tale.

* * *

 _Forty minutes_.

She'd stood there for forty minutes and allowed Rick to lie for her. Normally, Michonne couldn't abide liars or lies and she certainly wouldn't have suborned one. Yet, now she didn't say a word as he concocted a palatable story for the Brigadier General. It was her fault. All of it but particularly that moment. Rick was protecting her out of duty, out of some 'white knight' syndrome he seemed constantly to be suffering from. Or out of some greater sense of responsibility, she didn't know but he was doing it and she was allowing him to. For every moment she stood there and remained silent, it was a foot deeper into her own grave she was digging.

Michonne blinked. The room was silent again or maybe the ringing was back. For minutes after she had pulled that trigger there had been a ringing in her ears that drowned out everything else. _Had that returned?_ She blinked again and saw both Rick and the general staring at her.

"I'm sorry what?" She said as if coming out of a stupor. Maybe she was.

 _*Are you alright Ms. Philippe? Are you sure you don't require medical assistance?*_ The General asked in French, their mutually preferred language of communication with one another.

 _*Yes, I'm okay. Captain Grimes took good care of me. I just want to go home now.*_ She replied attempting a smile that pained her face, causing her to wince.

Matheo Fournier frowned as if he doubted very much that was the case as he looked at her battered face but then nodded in acquiescence. She knew being able to speak freely in French to her had always given him a sense of kinship with her he didn't have with a lot of the other Americans. Even though technically, he'd known Rick significantly longer. But the truth of the matter was, the mere fact that Michonne was standing there to say that to him gave proof to her words. _Rick Grimes had kept her alive._

"Well, I do want Clara to take a look at you first but then we can certainly have someone run you home. One of the privates or Richard, if he's feeling up to it." Fournier said in English.

"That's not necessary. I'll take her." Rick said practically talking over Fournier so that Michonne had to look quickly from one to the other to see who was speaking. There _was_ still a slight ringing in her ears, she realized then.

 _*No, I want to go_ home _.*_ Michonne reiterated in French. "Back to Atlanta."

* * *

Rick caught that last bit in English. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what the rest of that sentence had been. Plus, his time working for the UN in Francophone countries had actually improved his high school French quite a bit.

 _She wanted to go back to the States._

Given the night they'd just had, he couldn't blame her but he couldn't hide his surprise either. Michonne was a lifer if he'd ever seen one. She was a true-believer from the first moment he'd met her seven years ago. This may have seemed like an impulsive decision, but he knew her well enough to know it couldn't have been.

 _She sure picked a doozy of a mission to retire on._

* * *

Fournier cleared his throat yet again, rising from his reclined position against the front of his desk.

"Ms. Philippe, Michonne, this is a serious decision." Fournier said in English, apparently no longer feeling comfortable speaking in his mother tongue and excluding Rick. "I know that tonight has been a trying experience—"

"Trying?" Michonne snorted involuntarily. She laughed one hysterical laugh before catching herself. She composed herself before continuing, deliberately stepping closer to him and away from where Rick was reaching for her. "My friends, people I've known for years, are dead. Four people! Four people that you're gonna have to ship home in pine boxes…."

She stopped. There may not even be any boxes she realized then. With the exception of Maggie, she and Rick hadn't been able to recover any of the bodies before they were forced to flee. She looked at Rick and he frowned. Then she realized her mistake a moment too late.

" _Quatre?_ Did Lieutenant Walsh survive the firefight?"

"N-no. I-it happened like Rick said." Michonne stumbled over her words as unbidden memories came back in angry flashes. Tears began to fall from her eyes.

 _Oh. My. God. What did I do?_

Fournier looked from Michonne to Rick trying to discern if he was missing something as Michonne began to sob. She clutched at her stomach with her free hand.

"Matt, I need to get her to the infirmary _now_." Rick took hold of Michonne then to keep her upright turning her into his uninjured shoulder to weep.

"Of course, of course. I'm so sorry to you both. Richard, you get some rest and report back at 1400 to fill out the paperwork." There was a cold efficiency to Fournier's words but the concern and sadness was written all over his face. Still, even in the midst of a peacekeeping operation in the middle of Africa, they all remained beholden to a larger, unfeeling bureaucracy.

He walked up to Michonne and put a comforting hand on her shoulder using it to guide both her and Rick, who held her tightly now, toward the door.

 _*Ms. Philippe, we will revisit this conversation again when you are feeling better. Until then, for lack of something better, please accept my condolences on the loss of your team.*_

Michonne nodded into Rick's shoulder and allowed herself to be escorted out. _Blue Helmets_ , the UN police decked out in their fatigues and signature blue and white-colored helmets, stood on the other side of the General's door and escorted them both to the infirmary.

* * *

The entire time Dr. Lissouba tended to her, Rick noticed Michonne wouldn't remove the hand that she held across her chest. Even as her pulse was taken and her blood was drawn Michonne, kept her left hand firmly clasped over her breast. It took a minute before Rick realized she wasn't covering her heart.

' _It's your other left, dummy.' Shane used to tease him in grade school when it was time to do the Pledge of Allegiance._

Rick wiped a tear that was threatening to slip from one eye roughly. He'd known that motherfucker since elementary school. It was always _Grimes and Walsh_ , through school, through the Corps, even after Rick decided to join the UN. It had been like that since they were ten years old and in the course of one night it was over. He took a bracing breath that the nurse mistook for a reaction to her stich work.

"We're done, Captain Grimes. I'm sorry if I hurt you." Makemba, Dr. Lissouba nurse, said bashfully.

' _You know in Africa, you're allowed more than one wife.' Shane had loved to rag on Rick about the young nurse's crush on him_.

"Don't worry about it, Kem." Rick answered, his eyes still trained on the curtain behind which the doctor quietly spoke with Michonne.

"They didn't…violate her?" Rick asked quietly. He couldn't bear to ask the question of Michonne on the ride back but he also couldn't bear not knowing now.

Makemba shook her head discreetly. "She won't let the Doctor examine her but she says it didn't happen. I believe her."

Rick looked at Kem then. "Why?"

Makemba made direct eye contact with him and spoke earnestly. The sadness in her eyes was a departure from the usually jovial young woman. "Because she can walk."

Rick clenched his jaw and hopped off the examining table. "Thank you, Kem."

 _These were the people Shane had decided to get into bed with?_

These were the people that he'd chosen to betray his best friend and every ideal they'd ever believed in for? Rick thought he'd known Shane better than any other single human being on the planet – but as he realized tonight, he didn't know the man at all.

When she was done, in the wee hours of the morning, Rick drove Michonne home to her small flat far from the mission HQ in central Kisangani. While most UN officers chose to live in apartments adjacent to the HQ and within an unofficial 'green zone', an area patrolled and protected by their peacekeepers, Michonne chose to live amongst the people. Rick had always admired that, but now it terrified him. Though he realized it wasn't the time to broach the subject again.

Michonne unlocked her front door and Rick watched as her shoulders fell. He had no idea how long she'd been holding them up or that she was, but now she deflated like a punctured balloon. She staggered to the small table that delineated the line between her tiny living room and her even smaller kitchen, and fell heavily into the chair beside it.

"'Chonne, if you don't mind, I'd like to take your couch?" He was only asking as a formality. There was no way in hell she was getting him out of that apartment before he had to report back to HQ.

Michonne shrugged unable to speak. Somewhere between the hospital and her house she'd lost the ability of speech, it seemed.

Rick flopped down on the couch, first removing his side arm and placing it carefully on her coffee table before removing his shoes. They sat in silence like that for long minutes before Michonne got up again and padded to the refrigerator on shoe-less feet as well. She struggled with a jug of water and her cup, still refusing to remove the hand crossing her chest. Curiosity finally won out and Rick rose out of his chair, coming over to her in the kitchen.

"Want some?" She asked finally regaining her voice although it sounded disused for years instead of hours.

Rick shook his head before reaching for her. Michonne stepped back reflexively. Though they'd known each other forever, Rick had touched her more in the past eighteen hours than he had in the preceding seven and a half years combined. Clearly, she didn't want it to become a habit. Neither of them had forgotten the shiny gold band that he'd worn forever on his left hand.

Rick paused briefly but didn't stop gently grasping her left elbow. She jerked back immediately and he quirked his head to the side in question. He had her pinned between the counter and the refrigerator with no means of egress. Applying more pressure, but still gently, he grasped her elbow and forearm in his hands.

"Is it hurt? Why didn't Dr. L give you a cast?" He questioned in a hushed tone.

He had presumed that was part of what was happening behind the closed curtain until Michonne exited without one. Still, as she continued cradling her arm, he'd resolved to get to the bottom of it.

"No." She answered firmly. "No. I'm fine. I keep telling everyone, I'm fine!"

Michonne's voice rose, which was something it rarely did. The mystery intensified for Rick. She struggled past him, pushing and elbowing to get clear.

"Michonne." He struggled with her, surprised by her behavior.

"Get off of me, Rick! I'm fine!" New silent tears streamed down her face.

"Michonne." He said again just in time to receive an elbow to the side. Makemba told him he'd bruised those ribs and he hissed in pain confirming as much.

"Oh God." She clamped a hand over her mouth and stopped struggling. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay." He said breathlessly. He didn't give up though tightening his grip on her elbow.

"Please don't. I just have to get out of these clothes. I promise you, I'm fine." Her eyes pleaded with him to let it go.

 _He wouldn't._

Moving as gently as he could without possibly hurting her, he pushed her formerly white, now blood-stained sleeve down to her elbow and looked. As she had promised, it looked fine. There was no obvious bruising to her lovely obsidian skin. Then using more force as she resisted, he pulled her arm away from her chest and extended it forward toward himself. Tears fell freely down her face now and she moaned.

Rick was shocked.

Over her right breast was a gory, pink, puckered mass of skin, blood and dried viscera.

"My God Michonne, were you hit?" Rick's heart skipped two beats and might have stopped entirely if logic hadn't stepped in. She couldn't have possibly been shot. Not only had the doctor given her a clean bill of health but he'd looked her over himself.

Rick leaned forward, much more than strict propriety should have allowed, and peered at the wound. The first thing he noticed was it wasn't a wound. It wasn't even her skin. It was gore adhered to her clothing. As he looked more closely, Michonne's crying intensified. She turned her face away from his covering her mouth with her hand as if she couldn't bear the inspection. Rick reached out and touched it gingerly with his index finger, finally figuring it out. It was brain matter….

 _Shane's brain matter_.

Rick turned from Michonne quickly then, dry heaving violently into her sink. She finally pushed his body out of her way and ran to her bathroom, slamming the door and locking herself in.

"Michonne? Michonne." Rick knocked gently on the door a few minutes later after he'd composed himself. "Michonne, I'm sorry."

"Go away, Rick. Please." She called through the locked door. Rick eased himself onto the floor and sat with his back against the wall opposite.

He listened as the shower came on and minutes later turned off. He listened as she rifled through her medicine cabinet. Finally, the door opened and he stood as she stepped out wrapped in two gleaming white towels, one around her body and one on her head.

"There's another towel in there. If you're not gonna leave, you have to wash up. I can't stand looking at you like that anymore."

Rick looked down at himself for the first time all night. He had thought Michonne looked terrible, battered and bruised and covered in viscera and blood like the survivor of a massacre. He actually looked worse. He could understand her request even if it had been harsh. Before she could exit the bathroom fully so that he could enter, he stopped her once more by putting his hand against her bare shoulder.

"Were you serious about going back to Atlanta?"

Michonne looked directly into his eyes, the fathomless brown orbs looked through him, and nodded.

"We killed people tonight. We're here to keep the peace and we murdered people."

"Michonne, everything we did tonight, we did in self-defense."

"Was it?" She tried to shake his hand off her shoulder. "Is that what you're gonna tell Shane's family?"

Rick swallowed hard. Except for his grandma in a King County nursing home, Rick, his wife Lori and their son Carl were Shane's family. _How in God's name was he ever gonna tell Lori and Carl the truth? Would they even believe him?_ If Michonne didn't believe him and she'd been standing right there, how would they?

"Tomorrow, I'm typing up the resignation of my commission and I'm getting on the first transport to Kinshasa. If I'm lucky maybe I can be back in Georgia by the end of the week." Michonne continued pulling him back from the dread of his thoughts to the dread of the present moment.

 _She was quitting. More than that, she was leaving. Would he ever see her again?_

"Rick, I don't want you to take this the wrong way but after I leave here, I don't _ever_ want to see you again." Michonne said as if she was reading his mind.

Rick's hand dropped from her shoulder to his side and hung there limply. He looked deeply into her eyes and saw that she spoke the truth. Not from a place of anger, malice or recrimination but with great sorrow, regret and resolve.

"Okay." He said simply, resigned. He silently moved into the bathroom as she slipped out. They were careful not to brush each other. "Fair enough."


	2. Chapter 2

***Author's Note*** (sigh) I have to admit I find FF not user-friendly in the extreme. Perfect example: The angle quotes I was using to connote the use of a different language (other than English) being spoken don't translate. As well, the multiple star * symbols I was using to note the passage of time don't carry over. Ugh. So, for my purposes, not because it actually makes any sense, whenever people are speaking a language other than English I will note it initially in text then place a star * before and after the statement. I will also try to use their horrible horizontal line to denote time passage or POV change. I absolutely hate how that looks but what am I gonna do? (Besides publish this elsewhere -hint: archive03 in the format I prefer). Sorry about that. Anyhoo, on with the show!

7/25/2015 07:04 EST

Atlanta, GA

"What the hell is happening up there? Dollars to donuts someone's got their thumb up somebody else's puckered asshole."

At that, Michonne looked up and saw the hulking man, who just a few minutes earlier had been laying on the horn of the truck behind her, standing at her side now. His face was scrunched in concentration, eyes peering down the long row of cars stretched out for seemingly miles in front of them. Michonne hadn't seen a traffic jam like this since she'd traveled the Grand Truck Road in India as a student abroad. At least then there had been vendors along the sides selling refreshments and trinkets. It was sweltering out here at seven in the morning and nothing was being passed around but pure attitude.

"I don't know." She said finally looking again at the great gorilla of a red-haired man at her side. "You have the better vantage point, what do you see?"

The man shielded his eyes from the sun's relentless glare and squinted to look. "Nothing. Nothing but a buncha idiots outta their cars."

Michonne looked around amused by his lack of self-awareness. Still, it was true. Everywhere she looked, people were out of their vehicles trying to determine for themselves what exactly was happening.

"We should get back in our cars in case traffic starts to move," she said to him, suddenly feeling apprehensive.

 _This was not the day for her to be late._

She had a presentation to give in two hours for her bosses at the CDC. Even three years later, Michonne was still shocked that she'd scored her job working as a public health attorney surveilling at-risk populations and influencing public health policy for the governmental agency. Truthfully, she was surprised she had even wanted to work in that arena again. Yet here she was eager to get to work, enjoying every minute of her very demanding job. More importantly though, she was safely behind a desk not having to worry about placating vain warlords just to get medicines into villages or having to negotiate with prevailing juntas just to cross imaginary borders. She'd left that life behind and had not looked back once.

 _Well, basically._

She sat back in the driver's seat of her coupe, closed the door and stared at her hand on the steering wheel. She didn't know why she hadn't taken her engagement ring off yet. It wasn't as if she regretted breaking her engagement. It had been wrong of her to even accept Michael's proposal in the first place but she had in an effort to convince herself they could be happy. And they could have been, she believed that still, if only she hadn't received that letter from—

Michonne screamed.

A police officer on a motorcycle careened into the side of her car taking out the large ginger man that was standing next to it. The officer himself flew up into her windshield shattering the glass into a million pieces that still remained intact in the frame. He moaned and Michonne scrambled out of the car from the passenger side. She climbed awkwardly onto her hood to check the officer. Releasing the strap on his helmet, she reached under his clothes to check for a pulse at his carotid artery. It was weak and thready.

The officer moaned, grasping at her sleeve.

"Sir, are you okay? I'm gonna call 911." She reached in her blazer pocket and realized she'd left her cell phone in the car. She looked down and it stared back at her, separated by glass, on her dashboard.

"Shit. Can someone call 911?" She shouted. Looking around she saw no one responded. The people nearest her stood staring in shock at something down the rows.

"All right Sir, don't move, okay?" Michonne peered over his body onto the driver's side planning to hop down and check the big man on the ground. The officer tugged at her blazer moaning louder pulling her attention back to him before she could see about the other.

"What?" She asked leaning forward. He moaned again indecipherably.

Placing both hands at either side of his head, she leaned forward, putting her ear to his mouth.

"Run." He gurgled. Michonne recoiled immediately as his directive became clear.

As if he'd said it loudly enough for everyone to hear, the people near the cars next to her took off down the row. Looking behind her then and down the row she saw what they had seen. A great wave of humanity making its way up the rows in her direction. People were running down the aisles, some were climbing up on the cars and they could be seen going up and down each peak and valley, while some tripped and were left behind, trampled.

Curiously, one in every tenth person lunged at their fellow runners, taking them down like the cheetahs and gazelles she'd once seen on the Tanzanian savanna. Michonne needed a moment to comprehend what she was seeing.

"Run." The officer spread eagled on her hood said again, pulling her out of her momentary stupor.

The first, fastest people were already sprinting past her car. Mostly men and some women, some dragging terrified children with them, flew past her.

 _Now, Michonne. Now!_

A voice she hadn't heard in years filled her mind. Pulling her skirt up, she wrenched one shoe off her foot and kicked off the other. Rearing back, she brought the stiletto heel down on the glass of the windshield finishing the job the officer started. It broke into a million iridescent pieces before her. The officer fell back like a ragdoll stretched across her dashboard. Michonne dusted the glass off and grabbed her cell phone. She was preparing to scramble over her roof and onto the truck behind her when the officer grabbed her again. Blood was now pouring out from his sleeve, over his hand and onto the cuff of her blouse where he held her. He coughed up more. Blood covered the whole lower half of his face now. Sticking her phone in her bra, she began to open his jacket to look at the wound he must have sustained.

"No." He insisted. "Run. Run."

Obediently, Michonne let go. But he still held her with surprising strength.

"Run. Run."

"I can't if you don't let me go!" She shouted at him as the number of people passing began to increase. The first of the car hoppers was gaining on her, already on a hood only two car lengths away. The officer coughed up enough blood to clear his passages temporarily.

"Gun." He said more clearly. "GUN."

Understanding finally, Michonne reached into his holster then and pulled out his Glock, slick with his life's blood.

"There." He whispered, pointing with the finger on the same hand, apparently the only part of his body he could still move.

She looked the way he was pointing. _The Georgia-Pacific Tower—the UK's consul general's office was there!_ Without ever knowing how good the piece of advice he'd given her was, the officer gasped his last.

Without thinking further, Michonne leapt off the hood of her car crashing into two men running in their suits, one who inexplicably still carried his briefcase. He swung it at her thinking she was one of the things he was running from. The corner of the hard leather case connected with her cheekbone. Knocking both the gun and the phone from her hands, they went flying. The gun slid under a parked car and the phone a few feet away. The man with the briefcase lurched back to his feet and continued running. The other grabbed for her phone. They both leapt for it at the same time, Michonne scrapped both the pantyhose and skin off her knees in the effort. Her hand closed around the phone, securing it in her grasp before the man elbowed her in the solar plexus. She fell back stunned and winded as the people who had been running around them both didn't bother anymore, stepping on her legs and hands. She screamed in pain as he attempted to wrest the phone out of her hands.

A foot out of nowhere kicked the other man in the face ejecting blood and teeth everywhere. Large, strong hands dragged Michonne to her feet unexpectedly and pulled her out of the way, in-between a car and a van parked at the sidewalk.

"You okay, Sis?"

She barely had a chance to register the large, burly Black man with kind, if frightened eyes and a full beard before he rejoined the crush of people. Then he took off down the sidewalk, without the answer to his question but with the speed and agility of an athlete. Panicked people crushed both her attacker and cell phone underfoot. In mere seconds, she watched the light go out in his eyes. Getting on her hands and knees between the vehicles, she dragged herself under the silver sedan to retrieve the gun from where she'd seen it fall. As she crawled under the car, she heard moans and a gnashing sound accompanied by ear-splitting screams.

Whatever had caused the riot had caught up with the runners. There was a frenzy of screaming and crying. Michonne watched the feet as they passed her position, saw as some left the ground pouncing on others. The bodies on the ground being trampled were increasing in number. Her hand reached for the Glock lying near her in the gutter and pulled it to her chest. As she watched, a small girl who had tripped with her mother and was subsequently trampled began to tremble. Michonne assumed it was some sort of ghastly death rattle, until the girl's one, uncrushed eye reopened. It rolled back down from inside her head and focused with blood-shot clarity on Michonne hidden beneath the car.

Michonne gasped.

The girl reached a mangled arm in her direction connecting instead with the calf of a woman running by. Pulling her down, she bit into the passer-by's ankle ripping out her Achilles' tendon. Michonne put her hand over her mouth to smother any horrified sounds she may have made. Shoeless and hurt, Michonne wasn't sure how she planned to make it the twenty or so yards through the alley to the UK Consulate building but she knew in that moment she had to try. Dozens of feet still sprinted by on both sides of the car. She looked toward the little girl again only to find her feasting on the leg of her victim, her attention completely averted. Michonne struggled out from under the car on the other side, using the bodies of the fallen as cover.

Getting her feet under her in the midst of the best and fastest reverse burpee she had ever done in her life, one her trainer would have been proud of, Michonne sprang to her feet and sprinted across the sidewalk, down the small side street, miraculously not colliding with any person or thing as she did it. Reaching the doors of the building she was stunned to find them locked. Looking behind her quickly and then looking into the building she saw a security guard cowering in a corner behind the front desk.

"Hey!" She slapped the glass of the door with her open palm frantically. He looked up but didn't respond. "Hey!" She screamed again growing apprehensive about shouting.

Chaos had officially broken out in the streets. People were running in every direction. Michonne ran to the window closest to him and banged on it with her gun-butt. Seeing it in her hand seemed to frighten him more. Immediately, she put the gun behind her. "Let me in! I've got to get to the consulate!"

The timid man shook his head and sank further into the corner.

A glint reflected in the glass caught her attention. Michonne turned in time to see a man lunging headlong at her from ten feet away. She side-stepped him like a matador with far more calm than she thought she possessed. His head cracked open against the plate-glass of the building with a sickening sound.

"Geezus Christ!" She exclaimed as his bloodied remains slid to the ground in front of her.

 _That didn't even make sense._ He killed himself, mindlessly. Michonne had had enough.

"Open this door or I'll shoot the glass!" She had no idea if the glass was bulletproof, but she was determined to empty the entire clip finding out. She lifted the gun aiming at the same bloody spot the man's cranium had probably weakened.

"Okay. Okay!" The security guard shouted, lifting his hands in surrender. He pointed to the revolving doors and pulled out his keys. Michonne ran for the door pushing as soon as he bent to unlock it. As it began its slow revolution another of the things appeared as if out of nowhere, trying to push its way into the tight space between the wall and her section. Suddenly, the guard stepped into the opposite space and pushed back to keep it from closing.

 _His intention quickly became clear. He was going to stop the doors from revolving and effectively allow the thing to wedge its way inside the space with her._

Michonne turned and banged on the glass with her fist, "What the fuck are you doing? Let the door go!"

She watched as he shook his head no, trying to reach down and relock the doors while simultaneously keeping it from revolving any further.

 _God forgive me._ Michonne whispered to herself bringing the gun up level with the face of the formerly human thing snarling at her. She pulled the trigger. The recoil was stronger than she remembered wrenching her shoulder and blowing the thing back out of her space. The noise in the tiny compartment was momentarily deafening. But afterward, the doors revolved smoothly enough for Michonne to squeeze through to the other side just as the security guard relocked it. Michonne walked over to him and lifted her arm fully intending to pistol-whip the coward who had twice jeopardized her life in less than five minutes, but she paused taking a deep breath to calm herself.

"What's your name?" She asked instead, as he shrank under her hard gaze.

"N-Nicholas, Nicholas Thompson."

"Tell me Nicholas Thompson, is there anyone else here yet?" Michonne looked at the time on the large marble clock on the wall. It was still only seven-twenty in the morning.

"M-most people don't start coming in until eight."

"Anyone up in the Consul General's office yet?"

"Probably just Andrew. He's their intern. He always comes early to open up."

"Floor?" She said marching with purpose across the empty lobby.

"Twenty-seven." He said wiping the dust from his knees as he rose.

Michonne pushed open the heavy stairwell door. "Nicholas?"

He looked at her.

"You better smarten up if you want to make it another twenty-four hours."

Michonne thought she was going to die as she ran up the first fifteen floors but got her second wind on floor twenty. Entering into the cool atrium of the Consul General's office, Michonne knew immediately something was wrong. The fine hairs on her arms and on the back of her neck rose as they had whenever she knew a meeting with one of the factional warlords was headed south in the old days.

The office was completely silent and yet she was distinctly aware she wasn't alone. As she had been taught, Michonne put one hand under the other to support the gun and put her finger on the side of the trigger keeping it pointed down by her feet. She looked around, firearm at the ready.

"Hello?" She said softly. "Andrew? Anyone?"

She almost dreaded the response as she moved behind the receptionist's console. She picked up the phone listening for a dial tone. There was still one. Despite the burgeoning anarchy in the streets, the services hadn't yet broken down. Reaching for the remote for the reception area television she turned it on. The BBC, naturally, was the station of choice. They weren't reporting anything out of the ordinary. _So it wasn't international._ Michonne exhaled. She flipped around the channels while still looking intermittently around the room. The local news that was her best choice, she realized. Her stomach dropped when she saw the test pattern on the first channel. Switching then to CNN, which was Atlanta-based, she prayed for something different, and was disappointed. Across five local and two cable channels, there was nothing but dead air and a test pattern. Her heart sank.

Just then, a shadow fell across the frosted glass of the back office. Behind the frosted Union Jack seal she saw a face. It turned to her, eyes bloodshot and wild. It snarled and banged itself against the glass. _Andrew._ Clearly, he was unable to open the door. Whatever happened to these people had turned them into their baser selves, wild like animals and driven by similar impulses yet unable to accomplish more than the most basic functions. The part of her that admired the scientists she spent day in and day out with was more curious than horrified. The rest of her; however, was scared shitless.

Keeping her eyes on Andrew stalking her from behind the glass, Michonne reached for the phone again and called her friend Jacqui's desk at the CDC. It rang uninterrupted until the standard voicemail greeting came on. She racked her brain for Jacqui's cell number. _No answer there either._ She tried the main switch board. Someone always answered that number, yet nothing. The poison control number, which was supposed to be manned twenty four-seven, three sixty-five was next, but again nothing. Michonne struggled against a rising panic. Andrew stared at her. His red eyes following her every move as he snarled and banged his head against the glass unceasingly.

 _Think. Michonne. Think._

She looked down at her ring. _Mike._ Picking up the phone again, she dialed his number and got a busy signal. She tried her cousin, her aunt, her favorite Cambodian restaurant, any number she could remember— all busy. That wasn't good. That meant the switchboards were filling up with panicked calls all over the state, possibly soon the country. If she was lucky she probably had another thirty minutes before all calls in and out of the state of Georgia ground to a halt. Without her cell phone or an address book her calling options were severely limited.

 _She had one number left._ She didn't know why she even still remembered it, other than it belonged to her beloved mentor. Michonne racked her brain to remember all the numbers in the correct order as she picked up the receiver yet again to check for a dial tone. It took her three tries on three different lines to finally get one and then she dialed slowly. Watching as the person formerly known as Andrew watched her wasn't aiding her recall.

"Nine-one-seven," she recited aloud to which Andrew snarled from behind the glass. "255-0176."

The phone rang for what seemed like an interminable duration as Michonne held her breath.

"This is Deputy Secretary Greene…"

 _Voicemail. Fuck._

Michonne nearly slammed down the phone in despair. When the message finally beeped, she spoke as if she were hopped up on Ritalin, speeding through her situation in a more frightened tone then she thought she would hear coming from her own mouth. It took her a moment to figure out what was going on with her, but soon it became apparent. Without being fully cognizant of it, Michonne realized Andrew became increasingly agitated any time she spoke or moved. As she left her message, he snarled and snapped with more and more urgency banging more than just his head into the glass. Michonne realized then if he ran headlong into it, as the one downstairs had, he would break through and be on her in a matter of seconds.

Just then, another line on the telephone switchboard rang startling Michonne. For the briefest of seconds she was confused by this turn of events. Picking it up and putting it to her ear with the same hand that held the gun, she spoke tentatively.

"Hello?"

"Oh, thank God," Hershel Greene's soft, calm voice washed over Michonne like a gentle wave. "Michonne?"

"Hersh?" Her heart leapt with relief.

"Where are you? What the hell is happening down there?" The UN Deputy Secretary-General's southern accent somehow grew stronger anytime he spoke about his home state. "It sounds like all hell has broken loose in Atlanta. Are you safe where you are?"

Michonne looked at Andrew staring unblinkingly back at her. "For the moment, I don't know how much longer that will be."

Hershel clearly put his hands over the receiver and spoke to someone else. "We're getting reports of cannibalism, random attacks, some sort of outbreak?" He asked her a second later.

"Hersh, I can't confirm any of that officially but I'll still tell you yes. Yes to all of it. I've seen it with my own eyes." As if no time had passed at all, Michonne put back on her UN investigator hat.

"Have we got him?" Hershel spoke to someone else, he was clearly having multiple conversations at once. "Yes? Hello? Hello?"

"Hello?" Michonne replied confused by what was happening on the line. If they got disconnected Michonne was unsure what she would do. Speaking to this man felt like the last tether binding her to what she'd previously known as reality.

"Hello?" Another voice said in response.

Michonne's stomach did a full revolution threatening to bring up the meager breakfast she'd had this morning. She recognized that country boy twang anywhere, even in her dreams.

"Hello, can you hear us?" Hershel asked then.

"I can hear you." He said, his voice so clear it seemed as if he was in the other room. "Michonne?"

"Rick?" She said hesitantly, unbelievingly.

She heard someone exhale but she was unsure which of the two men it was. She looked down at her engagement ring for some reason and twisted it so the stone sat in her palm. Closing it into a fist, she squeezed the diamond solitaire so hard it cut into her palm.

"Michonne, I got Rick on the line because he's in a position to come get you. We need to bring you both up to New York."

"New York? Why?" Michonne questioned, though she wasn't opposed to it. Right now, she wasn't opposed to anything that would get her out of there but it didn't make any sense.

"Michonne, I'm at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville," Rick cut in impatiently. "I can be there in two hours. I need to know, are you in a place where you can be safe for another two hours?"

Michonne sighed eyeing Andrew. He snapped at her, blood and saliva smearing the glass. She could try. _She would try._ "Yes."

"Then hang tight," Rick said in that flinty voice he used when they had been in their toughest spots and he would brook no argument from her or anyone else. "I'm coming."


	3. Chapter 3

2004

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

"…She threw my pants and shoes out the window, man! And of course they're long gone by the time my ass gets downstairs. So there I am, walkin' down Rue Charbonnerie in just my t-shirt and boxers. In my bare feet!" Shane's laughter nearly drowned out what he was saying. "I got people cat-callin' me, hootin', whistlin' like they ain't never seen somebody's ass in boxers before!"

Rick leaned against the hood of their car, watching as his friend was nearly doubled over in hysterics. He shook his head. _At least he can laugh at himself._

"They'd probably never seen a pasty white ass before." Rick replied drily, closing his eyes to appreciate the relief of a cool breeze every time the doors opened to the air-conditioned terminal.

"Who says my ass is pasty? 'Member how I told you me and Fantine found a nude beach up near Port-de-Paix—"

Rick raised a hand in faux-disgust stopping Shane before he even started. "Spare me."

He checked his watch.

"So, this mean you and Fantine are kaput or what?" Rick asked cutting to the chase. This story had been far too long in the telling.

Shane shrugged bashfully, as Rick watched, while he fanned himself with the hem of his shirt.

"I dunno. She runs so hot an' cold."

"Seems like it's been mostly hot lately." Rick reminded him, thinking of the gash in his eyebrow Shane now sported.

"Yeah, but that's when it's the most _fun_." Shane snickered mischievously as if he was still the ten year old kid that liked to leave live frogs in their teachers' desk drawers.

Rick and his best friend were parked in front of the Arrivals Terminal at Louverture International waiting for their newest charge. The recently appointed Head of Mission, Hershel Greene—a Georgia boy like himself—had personally asked Rick to make sure their newest investigator for the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti made it safely to HQ. But after over three hours, Rick had begun to worry that something was wrong. Port-au-Prince could be a dangerous place for someone who wasn't weary or prepared.

He checked his watch again.

"It's two seconds later than it was the last time, man. Look, there's only one way she can come out." Shane stated calmly seemingly amused by Rick's agitation. Then again, it seemed like Shane was always amused by anything that left Rick irritated.

"You want me to go in and check again?" Shane asked with exaggerated forbearance like Rick was an unreasonable child.

Between that, the waiting and the nearly unbearable heat bearing down on them, Rick was losing his patience. Besides that, Shane was a bit too eager, which was never a good sign.

"No. I'll go." He stated through gritted teeth.

"Suit yourself." Shane said crossing his arms and leaning back against the car door, thoroughly amused.

* * *

"You're back." The pretty young woman at the airline counter said a few minutes later, after putting a big grin on her face when she saw Rick coming.

Rick nodded grimly.

"Good news!" She reported silkily. "The flight landed over forty-five minutes ago. They should have cleared the baggage claim and customs by now." Leaning in toward him she added, "I'm not supposed to but I called and confirmed Ms. Philippe _was_ on the flight—"

Rick spun away from her on his heels. "Which way?"

He looked back at her briefly and she thumbed to the left quickly, startled by his abruptness.

Rick knew he could be intense but sometimes, like just then, it tended to get away from him. Still, he marched toward the security clearance area with purpose, pulling his UN badge out of his pocket and flashing it before the guards could raise a word of protest. He moved swiftly against the tide of people exiting toward the arrival gates. Looking one way and then another at a sea of faces, he realized then he had no idea who he was looking for.

He knew she was a woman, African-American, young – just twenty-seven, with a B.A. from Emory and a law degree from Yale. Dr. Greene seemed to be intent on filling-out his staff with Georgia natives if Rick, Shane and Michonne were any indication. But this girl was a particular favorite of his, he'd admitted to Rick. "Another daughter" is what he'd called her, and knowing how much Dr. Greene cherished his other two girls, Rick was reluctant to go back to HQ and readily admit he'd just lost her on her first day in-country.

He scanned the concourse, going so far as to examine the jet way where the plane was parked. He retraced her possible steps to the baggage claim, then through immigration. Just as he was about to admit defeat he spied a young woman walking out of a side office with an airline representative and a small child in tow. He should have ignored it. He knew for a fact that Michonne Philippe had no children. Though investigators weren't allowed to bring their families on assignment either way.

Still, this woman caught his eye. She was striking in a way Rick had a hard time putting his finger on. Not particularly tall, but statuesque in her bearing, she commanded attention. She had long brown locs that cascaded over her shoulders, pulled back from her face by a colorful piece of cloth that complemented her deep brown, flawless complexion. She was lean but ample in all the right places to make Rick's mouth water as he watched her. She wore a simple sleeveless olive-colored top that accentuated her sculpted arms and black jeans that hugged her curves. Honestly, there was nothing at all ostentatious about her but she was still magnetizing.

At the moment, she was bent at the waist so as to be face to face with the small boy whose hand she held. Preparing to turn away, Rick was struck by the gorgeous wide smile she gave the boy that lit up her face. She reached out and tickled him before pulling him into a quick hug. The child giggled and nuzzled a large stuffed animal he held in his other arm. Just then, her eyes turned toward Rick and connected briefly before turning back to her charge. He felt suddenly like he was eavesdropping on a conversation he had no right to, even though they were too far away from him to be heard.

The official at her side took the boy's hand from hers and she stood there waving good-bye as he guided the little boy away. Rick stood rooted in his spot seemingly dumbstruck, staring.

 _Sorry, but your princess is in another castle._

For some reason, just then the words to a silly, old video game he and Shane had liked to play as teenagers popped into his head. The strange interlude finished, he shook the idiotic thought from his mind and turned back toward the exits. Even though there was no reason for Ms. Philippe to be there, he was resolved to search the Departures side of the terminal for her next.

"Lieutenant Grimes?" A soft feminine voice queried from behind him.

Rick turned back to see the young woman approaching.

"Lieutenant Richard Grimes? Or are you Lieutenant Walsh?" She asked flashing Rick a glimpse of the smile she'd given the boy.

Rick's heart sank. As much as he'd wanted her to be Michonne a moment ago, that was how much he didn't want her to be now. Coming directly toward him, he could see even more clearly now, the woman was gorgeous. With large chocolate brown eyes and full luscious lips that framed a gleaming smile, Rick could feel his chest tighten. He took a deep bracing breath.

 _No,_ he resolved in that moment, _he was a professional and right now he was going to earn his money._

"Rick, please." He said, extending his hand to her as she approached. "The only person I don't mind calling me Richard is an eighty-four year old southern belle who goes by the name of Jean...she's my grandmother." He clarified.

"I assumed." She laughed at that. The sound was lovely, musical and graceful, like every other part of her. "I'm Michonne."

He nodded. She had a surprisingly firm shake he realized as he gripped her small hand.

"Where are your bags?" He asked looking around her for something, even a small attaché case.

She patted a duffle bag she wore slung across her back. "I like to travel light. So I can get up and go at a moment's notice."

"And the boy?" He said puzzled by the child's appearance and subsequent disappearance. He guided her back to customs and security, using his badge to walk them through.

"That was Andrè. He was traveling here for the very first time all by himself. We met on the plane." She smiled again widely at the thought. It was enough to blind Rick so he turned away, slipping his sunglasses back down from his head over his eyes.

"I'm sorry about that, by the way. I wanted to wait with him until his family came to get him. I apologize if I kept you waiting a long time. I would have called if I had your number."

"Not a problem." He said breezily as they stepped out of the cool terminal into the swelter. "We weren't waiting that long."

One of the dozens of beggars that lurked near the arrivals lounge waiting to accost arriving tourists came up to them then. Rick reflexively put himself between Michonne and the vagrant.

" _Ede m ', tanpri,_ " The man pled for help in Creole with his dirty hands held out to them beseechingly. He took a step back however when he saw Rick's expression.

"Rick, it's okay." Michonne said touching his arm. "It's fine."

It took a moment for Rick to register her statement. He allowed Michonne to move in front of him and address the man directly still keeping an eye out for any possible trouble or thieves that would use this distraction to pick a pocket.

Shane straightened up from his slouch against the car as he watched things unfold at a distance.

Michonne spoke with the man in hushed tones. Rick listened closely impressed with her Creole, though he didn't understand a word of it. It shouldn't have been a surprise that she was fluent, but it still was. After a moment, she clasped the man's gnarled hands in her own and whispered something to him before letting them go and ushering Rick on. The man watched them go with the same astonished look Rick was sure he sported.

"I hope you didn't give him any money." He frowned.

"Only what I had in my pocket. Maybe five bucks." She shrugged it off.

 _Great,_ he thought. _Yet another bleeding heart_. The Mission was lousy with them and more than anything else they made Rick's life complicated and his job even harder.

"What'd you say to him?"

"I told him he wasn't fooling anyone and to go get a real job." She said firmly.

Rick very nearly stopped in his tracks to look at her.

" _I'm kidding_ , Rick. Lighten up." She laughed at his dumbstruck expression. "I told him I wouldn't give him any more than that but if he ever needed a meal to come up to the Mission and ask for me."

In less than ten minutes Rick already didn't know what to do with this woman. Beautiful, smart, funny and compassionate, she was intriguing in a way he, as a happily married man, could definitely do without.

"This the one?" Shane asked of Rick, peering at them both over the top of his sunglasses as they approached the car.

Michonne pulled up short.

"The One?" She asked affronted, stopping in front of the door Shane held open for her.

"Yup." Shane insisted with a great flourish of his arms and his widest shit-eating grin. " _The one_ for whom time stops. _The one_ for whom all men must wait… _the one_ –"

"Okay, I got it." She held up her hand to halt him. "Very funny. Again, I'm sorry. Rick said you weren't waiting all that long."

She threw her bag into the back seat roughly and stepped in behind it, clearly irritated.

"Sure, sure, if three hours isn't a long time…give or take an hour." Shane said closing the door behind her.

Michonne groaned.

He and Rick exchanged heated looks over the roof of the car that concluded with an amusingly lewd gesture from Shane. They both calmly took their seats up front afterward.

"Look, you guys are my security detail, right? We're gonna be glued to each other for the next 120 days, right?" Michonne asked as she leaned into the space between the two front seats.

"Yes."

"Yep." Shane confirmed.

"…Okay, so then let's not bullshit each other. I can do without two yes-men and I'm guessing you'd prefer not to deal with a primadonna. So, can we all agree to avoid that?" Michonne said diplomatically.

"Fair enough." Shane said smiling, already clearly taking a liking to the beautiful young woman sitting behind him.

"Do you have a problem with that, Rick?" She asked noting Rick's conspicuous silence.

"No, I don't have a problem with that, Michonne." Rick said starting the car up and pulling it easily into the airport traffic.

"Well, alright then." She said before sitting back in her seat.

Rick looked at her through the rearview mirror watching as her stern expression eased, clearly satisfied she'd begun a very fruitful partnership.


	4. Chapter 4

7/25/2015 07:27 EST

Camp Lejeune, Jacksonville, NC

 _The world had turned upside down in Georgia while his ass was stuck in North Carolina._

That realization infuriated Rick as he gripped his cell phone hard enough to break it.

After the first reports of some strange psychosis taking over patients in the hospitals of major urban-areas hit, Rick had spent over an hour trying to get a flight home only to find out that all flights into and out of Atlanta were grounded. His Hail Mary had been driving onto the Marine Base in Jacksonville and hoping against hope someone would be willing to let an old Jarhead hitch a ride south. But as of seven am, he was still waiting.

Generally speaking, Rick didn't handle this sort of powerlessness well. In fact, next to his taciturn nature, on the list of things his ex Lori couldn't stand about him, his control-freak tendencies were number two with a bullet. And as if to prove the point, just a few hours earlier he'd been on the phone strong-arming his Dad into making a 40-mile drive to collect Lori and their kids from her parents' house _and then_ driving them nearly 120 miles to Ft. Benning. It was something he would have much preferred to do himself but short of being there, his father was a decent substitute.

Luckily, whatever was running rampant in the cities hadn't yet made its way out to the surrounding suburbs and rural areas, but still, he wanted his family safely ensconced on the Army base before anything happened. The old man hadn't wanted to do it, so it took time they didn't have, to persuade him. The wasted time only succeeded in frustrating Rick further.

Not that Lori, on her side of things, was any better. Convincing Lori had also been a minor feat. There was no love lost between his ex-wife and his drunkard of a father, but since the old man still handled a gun better than anyone he'd ever known, he was exactly the person required. The only one he could have possibly trusted more with such a duty was Shane, and the very thought of the man still made Rick scowl at nothing in particular. Four years later, four years in which he was above ground and Shane was below it, still had not helped him figure out a way to forgive the man. For what he'd made Rick do and for what he'd done to Michonne.

 _Michonne._

Rick didn't know where she was or what she was up to but he prayed she wasn't still in Atlanta. He had heard a rumor some time ago that she'd been up for some high-powered lobbying gig in DC. Now, having heard about the chaos in Atlanta, he prayed she'd taken it. Although with similar reports coming from just about every major city along the Eastern Seaboard this morning, he didn't know what to think. He just hoped she was all right.

Last night as he heard the news, Michonne had been the first person he'd thought of. Rick wondered now if he should be ashamed that he hadn't thought of Lori first, though he wasn't quite sure why. Technically, they weren't still married and their children were safely thirty miles away from the nearest city. It was acceptable that his mind wandered to the only other person that he truly cared about living in an urban area. _Right?_

Rick started calling early, beginning with the last phone number he'd ever had for Michonne and working backward. Most were wrong numbers answered by people irritated to be awoken so early in the morning and oblivious to the crisis brewing around them. Later, the calls became busy signals. Now, there was actually a message saying that all the circuits were currently busy.

He realized then he had been lucky to get through to his father and ex-wife when he did. With more and more bizarre reports coming in about psychosis-inducing pathogens and people running wild in the streets, Rick realized he had to find her. Once he knew Lori and the kids were okay he'd make his way to Atlanta, he'd decided. But in order to accomplish that, he would have to call in the only chit he possessed.

"Captain Grimes?"

Rick looked up from the desk he'd been blankly staring at in the office he was borrowing from a Staff Sergeant on vacation. A young private stuck his head in the door. Things had been hopping here from early. By six am, stories similar to the ones from New York, Atlanta, Philly, and Newark were popping up in Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte. The national guard was already being deployed and the Marines on this base were sitting anxiously awaiting their call.

"Yes?"

"There's a call for you. Line three." The young man said and then stood waiting to be dismissed.

Rick waived the formality off with irritation as he picked up the line. Whenever he was on base the underlings tended to forget he'd resigned his commission, choosing to stay on with the UN and leave the Corps. He didn't even wear his uniform anymore and yet he still found himself having to return numerous salutes from the enlisted men once they knew his rank.

"Captain Grimes, please hold for the Deputy Secretary."

Though he didn't technically know yet what it would entail, Rick knew without question that in exchange for any assistance they provided, he would be called back to UN Headquarters in New York. Even if, as unlikely as it was, this all blew over tomorrow his brief sabbatical was officially over.

When he came on the line, Hershel barely paused for a preamble.

"Rick?" Hershel's voice came in spottily. "We don't know what's going on yet but we're starting to get reports from all over."

"Besides just the East Coast?"

There was a deliberative pause on the phone. "Rick, it's everywhere. Tokyo went dark twelve hours ago."

Rick sat back in his chair. As soon as he got off this call he was calling Lori again to see if they'd gotten to Benning yet.

"What is it? Do you know? Does anyone know?"

"Everything is unconfirmed at this point. We're hearing things as wild as bands of marauding cannibals or some sort of new biowarfare. We have no idea. We haven't heard from the CDC since last night. I haven't heard from the WHO in hours. We think Geneva might be dark too."

Rick rubbed under his eye with the back of his thumb out of habit as he took that information in.

"We're pulling in all the investigators we can find and we need the security officers as well. We've requested permission to requisition one of the choppers there at Lejeune to bring you up here."

"I need to find Michonne." Rick stated plainly. If his plan dovetailed neatly with Hershel's so be it, but if not, that was still his main priority.

"I agree," Hershel answered, making Rick's life that much easier.

"What?" Suddenly someone interrupted Hershel, speaking to him in the background. "Give it to me. It might be Bethie." Hershel said anxiously.

Rick waited patiently. Hershel's younger daughter Beth was in school at Vanderbilt. Rick knew she was Hershel's whole world now after how he'd lost his other girl Maggie –just the thought of which made Rick sick to his stomach. A widower already, Rick was keenly aware that Hershel couldn't take any more losses. He prayed Beth was okay.

"Rick, hold on a second. You're not gonna believe it but I think I just got a call from Michonne."

Rick bolted upright in his chair from where he'd reclined.

"Where is she? Is she okay?" He asked with more urgency than he'd been aware he felt.

"Rick, I don't know anything yet. Just hold on." Hershel said in his usual sleepy baritone.

"Is this number right?" He asked someone in the room with him. "It says it's the British Consulate."

 _A consulate? What the hell was she doing there?_ Rick wondered, remembering that Michonne had insisted her jet-setting days were behind her. His mind raced with possibilities as he waited.

"Captain, we're patching you in." The officious voice from the beginning of the call came over the line again. "Keep holding."

"Have we got him?" Hershel's voice came back over the line. "Yes? Hello? Hello?"

"Hello?" It had been four years since they'd last spoken but it was as if no time had passed. Rick recognized her voice immediately.

"Michonne?" He said unbelieving of the amazing coincidence.

"Rick?" Aside from the clear anxiety in her voice, it was still his Michonne.

He had a million questions for her but at the moment the most pertinent ones were about her safety. Even without Hershel's approval, Rick knew he was going to get her, whether she was in London, DC or Atlanta. She just had to keep herself safe until he got there. From the tightness in her voice, he could already tell her situation was precarious, whether or not she was willing to admit it.

As she spoke with Hershel, Rick listened for any background noise or distinguishing sounds to provide clues to her situation. Though she said she was holed-up in the UK Consular offices in Atlanta alone, Rick was certain he heard an incessant knocking in the background.

"Are you in a place where you can be safe for another two hours?" Rick asked already on his feet and at the doorway of his borrowed office.

Putting the phone briefly to his chest, Rick stretched the attached cord to the breaking point in order to step into the hall. He stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled for the young private standing down the corridor, who'd come into his office earlier. Making a whipping gesture with his index finger pointing upward, he indicated to the young man that he intended to be wheels up in a matter of minutes. And within seconds the officer scrambled off to make sure that happened.

He came back to the call quickly, and after a painfully long pause, Michonne finally answered with hesitation. "Yes."

 _That didn't sound right._

Rick knew her and he knew what she sounded like when she was putting a good face on a crap situation. This was that.

"Hang tight," He told her. "I'm coming."

Hershel gave her directions to be on the roof to meet Rick at approximately ten, but he was hardly listening. He could hear her exhale heavily confirming his fears. She might not have the two hours it was gonna take to get there.

Just then, as if he had called the thought into being, he heard another large bang, followed by a crash.

"Oh shit!"

"Michonne?" Hershel said, his voice not nearly matching the level of distress Rick felt.

There was a sound like fumbling followed by a loud crash and the sound of glass breaking.

"Michonne?" Rick repeated trying to remain calm. "Michonne!"

Three pops, unmistakably the sound of gunfire, came over the line as Rick dropped the phone and broke into a sprint down the hall.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note:**

 _Hey Everybody! Thanks so much, I'm immensely gratified that you all are enjoying this. I'm living on your comments. Much more coming! To that end, normally, I'm noticing, my updates clock in at roughly 2500 - 4000 words per entry. Due to an HTML snafu, I thought Chapter 4 was an average update at approximately 3500 words. Unfortunately, when all was said and done (and cleaned up), it ended up being only 1800 words. My bad. As a result, I'm adding another chapter today to help even things out a bit. Hope you like it, it was one of my many favorites to write._

2006

Outskirts of Smara, Western Sahara

Rick looked up into the rearview mirror at Michonne sitting in the back seat. She rolled her eyes. Not at him he realized but at this situation.

He didn't know how many times he'd warned Shane not to shit where he ate. But it was inevitably like trying to teach a dog algebra. Shane nodded at appropriate intervals and then just proceeded to play with his balls and do whatever the hell he wanted. It had stopped being a humorous personal foible a while back and now was threatening to become an actual problem.

Michonne sighed heavily, expressing exactly what Rick felt non-verbally.

They'd been four people trapped in a tiny, hot Datsun for close to three hours where two of the people eventually would kill each other –provided the slightest opportunity or provocation.

As soon as UN Special Investigator Andrea Harrison stepped off the plane, Shane, despite Rick's warnings, had sworn he was in love. Fast forward two months and they were at each other's throats, as usual for Shane. But because she was not only a valued colleague but also a good friend, Michonne had worked overtime to act as a buffer between the two as tensions rose. Rick chose, prudently he thought, to stay out of it entirely. As far as he was concerned, Michonne worked on the side of the angels on this one and he was far more of a devil himself. That, however, didn't save him now having been charged with ferrying Ms. Harrison safely to a covert meeting she had with an exiled journalist.

"We're almost there," Rick announced finally as they entered Smara and the parapets of the old city center, _Zawiy Maalainin_ , came into view. He refrained from saying the 'Thank God' that followed it out loud.

Shane glanced at Rick briefly, clearly thinking the same thing, before he pulled out his weapon, checking it. The car was silent save for the clicking of his gun and clip, which seemed to magnify in the quiet. Not long after arriving at this posting, he and Shane had discovered the arid climate and strong winds made constantly assuring a clean gun a necessary habit, as grit frequently found its way into the slide rails jamming them. Unfortunately, doing so also had a way of putting the uninitiated on edge.

"We're only supposed to meet the guy, not kill him," Andrea spoke for the first time in an hour, rolling her eyes.

"This is in case he suddenly decides he wants to kill _us_ , Sweetheart." Shane's voice dripped with scorn.

Rick and Michonne exchanged another look in the rearview mirror, both telegraphing their fervent desire to be anywhere but here.

"I can't believe you called me that!" Andrea declared indignantly.

Shane chuckled, enraging her further.

"Tell me again where we're supposed to be meeting him?" Michonne cut in just then putting a soothing hand on Andrea's to calm her.

Rick sighed then too. It took all the strength Rick possessed not to put them both out on the side of the road and let them walk the rest of the way. Eager to empty the car, Rick scanned the narrow stone streets for a space. He quickly parked the car a block from their designated rendezvous point and then they all spilled out of the vehicle eager to be free of the confined space and each other.

" _The Ouissal Bazaar_. It should be just up here." Andrea nodded to indicate a small bazaar, the mouth of which spilled onto the street where they were standing with vendors and goods.

Andrea further secured the scarf she wore loosely wrapped around her blonde hair before taking the lead using the directions she'd been given by her contact.

"He's supposed to meet us in a stall inside."

Michonne followed suit, checking the lavender scarf covering her locs in the side-view mirror, before crossing the street behind Andrea with Rick and Shane trailing at a controlled distance. Despite both men's desire to, in a devoutly Muslim country like this one, neither man could risk standing too close to unmarried women.

As a UN human rights investigator inside a country specifically without a human rights mandate from the UN, what Andrea was there to do was officially unofficial and potentially very dangerous. Michonne came along primarily as her friend, since she was only technically allowed in-country as a Voting Rights Rapporteur, empowered to monitor for election fraud exclusively. As had become the case long ago, where Michonne went Rick and Shane generally followed –sometimes, like now, less willingly than others.

The bazaar itself was both byzantine and wondrous in composition with numerous canopied stalls, some tucked behind others, selling everything from fragrant teas and spices to shoes and books. Rick watched wearily as Andrea and Michonne attempted to pretend to be tourists. But despite their efforts to be inconspicuous, Rick suspected there was little chance that they weren't attracting at least a small amount of attention with their presence. In the tiny town that passed for a city in this sparsely populated country, three white people and a Black woman, all obviously Americans, were gonna be noticed.

The two women linked arms and spoke to one another as they walked slowly through the market, stopping to touch or look at things periodically. Normally, this was the exact type of place Rick also could have wandered for hours looking for items to charm Lori and wow his young son Carl. Michonne had dragged him to enough of them in the capital city, _Laâyoune,_ during the six months they'd been stationed there for him to develop a real appreciation. Honestly, he really enjoyed them though he'd never admit to it.

"Heads up," Shane said quickly, pulling Rick out of his thoughts. "Three-six-nine."

Rick looked casually to his left and right seeing what had caught his partner's attention.

Two men walked staggered by a few feet on the either side of the stalls, their eyes trained on Michonne and Andrea. Glancing back quickly, Rick also saw the man pulling up the rear distantly from the six o'clock position.

Instead of coming closer to the women, Shane and Rick opened up the distance between themselves, forming a triangle with their companions at its vertex. Andrea continued on unfazed but Michonne, almost sensing the change, glanced back at them quickly.

Rick met her eyes briefly giving her a reassuring wink and slight nod. Michonne barely registered a change in demeanor or action, as they continued through the marketplace as if she trusted them unquestionably with her safety. She turned back to her friend and smoothly re-engaged in their conversation. Rick couldn't help feeling a small degree of pride at that. He noted, however, when Andrea's back stiffened and she glanced around nervously having been made aware that something was happening.

Rick spied Andrea's contact even before she did. A slight, older man dressed in western clothes but wearing a deep green _haik_ – a cloth thrown over his shoulders like a toga –and a matching turban. He watched the two women approach carefully before stepping out from near a stall to show them gold bangles.

Shane paused looking cautiously at Rick. He gave his best friend the same reassuring wink he'd given Michonne a moment before, relaying the same message. _Everything was still alright._

Rick inhaled deeply taking in the mixtures of conflicting odors in the air and yawned. He used that moment to look around and check the locations of their 'escorts' surreptitiously.

They'd also spread out, taking four, eight and noon positions around them.

He had no doubt Michonne noticed something as well, though she still pretended to examine the jewelry as Andrea spoke with the man. She glanced up periodically to look around. _Maybe she was a little nervous._ Rick could hardly say he blamed her. Andrea had come to this small, relatively anonymous northern city to continue her ongoing investigation into reported abuses in refugee camps along the Algerian border. They were there to meet with a reporter source, who might have been able to give her more crucial evidence. It could end up being a very easy meeting or a very hard one.

Rick used that moment to reposition himself, walking past Michonne casually and just barely grazing the forearm she held at her side with his open palm.

It was an unexpectedly intimate gesture though the intention was entirely innocuous and more importantly, inconspicuous. He only wanted to reassure her that everything was still completely under control. She hardly seemed to register it, but looked more intently at the numerous necklaces, earrings, and bangles spread before her. Still, Rick suddenly felt as if the market had gotten ten degrees hotter and the stalls a foot closer together.

He stood at the far end of their same stall and looked at a small hexagonal box while also looking up periodically to check in visually with Shane. He picked up the box and peered at it as if he was considering a purchase. Covered in tiny pieces of colored glass and mirror shards, it was the exact sort of thing Lori would love. Instead, Rick used the slivers as a reflective surface to keep an eye on the man nearest him.

Andrea dug into her purse pulling out a small wallet from which she retrieved some local currency and U.S. dollars and overpaid the man for a pair of gold filigree earrings.

" _As-salāmu ʿalaykunna_ ," the 'vendor' said grasping her hands in both of his and giving her a traditional Muslim blessing, her purchase and also a small flash drive, covertly.

" _Waʿalaykumu s-salām_." Andrea replied as was customary. She stuffed her purchase deep into her purse and nodded to him with a smile. She took Michonne by the arm then and quickly walked down the row, past Rick, before cutting out of a side exit to the market.

 _They should have doubled-back the way they came._ Now she was leading them through a narrow street behind the tented bazaar. Rick looked up at Shane and shook his head as his friend frowned as if to say, _let it go_. They'd had a conversation before they left the Mission about staying on populated streets and not allowing themselves to be isolated. Andrea had nodded as if it was something she'd heard before and yet they were still following her into a blind alley.

Rick followed closely behind, reaching for his sunglasses as they stepped back into the stark sunlight from the slightly dimmer shaded bazaar. Without warning, a fist came at him delivering a glancing blow to his jaw. His knee trembled slightly, bending a little at the sudden shock of assault. Rick was more stunned than actually hurt, reflexively shoving his assailant away hard before the man could throw another sucker punch.

Andrea screamed and Rick looked left in time to see Shane give the guy struggling with her for her purse a punishing left hook. Rick turned back to see his guy bouncing back quickly. The idiot ran at him again with a shaky jab that Rick blocked easily with his left arm before delivering his own right cross that the guy basically ran face first into. As the guy dropped like a stone, Rick spun around and saw the third man grappling bodily with Michonne. He held her arms as she struggled valiantly with the far larger man.

Pulling a Sig Sauer out of his belt holster, he walked up to them and leveled the gun at her attacker's head.

"ENOUGH!" He shouted and everything on the entire street seemed to stop.

A second later, the two others that he and Shane had dropped struggled shakily to their feet and scurried away. It was only once they did that Rick realized how young they all were. _These were boys._ The one that held Michonne froze when he saw the gun in his face, forcing her to have to wrench herself angrily out of his grasp. Otherwise, for one moment, the whole world seemed to stand perfectly still.

As a UN Security Officer, Rick was empowered to carry a firearm and protect his charges worldwide but he was still very much subject to any and all the laws of their host country. As a result, most officers rarely drew their service weapons, let alone fired them. Despite that, Rick's blood boiled and it took all the self-control he could muster at that moment to stop himself from pulling the trigger.

"Step back." He ordered, cocking his head to the side.

" _Que_?" The young man asked, clearly not comprehending English. He trembled with his hands up as if in total surrender.

*He just told you to back the fuck up!* Shane informed the youth in Spanish, one of the most common tongues of the country.

Between the two of them, Shane had always been the one with the facility for languages. It had been a plus when joining the UN. And today it just might save someone's life, Rick realized.

"YOU. DO. NOT. TOUCH. HER," Rick said slowly and he was certain the young man understood, although Shane translated it anyway.

The kid nodded vigorously, apologizing to Michonne and everyone else vehemently in Spanish. Satisfied, although only just barely, Rick replaced his gun in the scabbard holster on his hip, pulling his shirt back down over it.

*Get outta here!* Shane told the kid.

He didn't have to say it twice.

"You okay?" Rick asked pointedly of Andrea, who nodded, temporarily stunned.

"You?" He asked his partner.

"Easy-breezy, brother," Shane said, a chuckle playing at his lips.

"And you?" He settled his eyes on Michonne for the first time in minutes.

"I'm okay, Rick." She said quietly as if she were trying to calm a beast. "Are you?"

Rick nodded, watching Andrea retrieve her purse from the cobblestoned street.

"Yeah, I know." She nodded, walking up to him and wiping away a small trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth with her thumb. A small smile flickered, barely, at her mouth as she looked into his eyes.

He tried to match her calm, his breathing slowing and his blood pressure returning to normal. She always had that effect on him, easing his anxiety and bringing order to his discord. He reciprocated by pulling her scarf back up over her head and adjusting it for her before looking around to see if they had any more company on the street. They didn't.

"Do you think Hamza will be alright? Should I try to get a message to him?" Andrea asked suddenly, straightening her own scarf back over her hair where it had become disheveled in the struggle.

"About what?" Shane asked putting his hand on his hip and turning to look at her closely.

Andrea gave him an incredulous look.

"About the men coming after us."

Shane burst out laughing. Michonne smiled mildly and even Rick would have too if his jaw ached a little less.

"What?" Andrea's big blue eyes went wide looking from Shane to Michonne like she was on the outside of a private joke.

"Those were kids," Michonne admitted reluctantly.

"I hate to break it to you, Honey, but that was just a plain ole everyday mugging. I mean, I saw your little brush pass and what-not. But this ain't espionage and you ain't James Bond. I think your little journalist friend is probably safe." Shane could barely contain his smugness.

Andrea huffed, glaring at him. "It's not funny. He's a _Sahrawi_ dissident, he could be killed!"

"And while I'm sure that's true in _Algeria_ , here? In Smara? Tonight? I think he'll be just fine."

"I think those boys just saw what they thought would be easy pickins: clueless Americans, wandering around aimlessly." Michonne offered by way of explanation.

Shane laughed harder as Andrea very nearly sulked. They all turned toward the main street headed back to where they'd left the car.

"You're an idiot," Andrea grumbled deliberately walking well away from Shane.

"Woo-boy, well if I am, you sure as shit are too."

Rick checked his watch, looking over into Michonne's eyes as they walked abreast of one another.

 _Three more hours of this._

She shook her head remorsefully. Clearly, they were having the exact same thought.

"You wanna drive?" He asked.

"Sure." She said taking the keys from him after he fished them out of his pocket. "As long as _you_ call shotgun."


	6. Chapter 6

7/25/2015 08:07 EST   
Atlanta, GA

 _Rick's coming._

Michonne took a deep breath.

Despite years spent protecting her, in all the time she'd known him, Rick, God bless him, had never once made Michonne feel like a 'damsel in distress'. But as she stood there clutching a gun in one hand and a phone in the other, both with vice-like grips, that's exactly how she felt.

 _Hang tight he'd said. He's coming._

"…we're gonna need you up on that roof by ten o'clock, do you think you can do that?" Hershel was asking.

Michonne looked down briefly when suddenly something caught Andrew's attention behind the glass, effectively catching hers as well. His head craned rapidly left, his feral eyes fixing on something down the hall. Michonne's eyes went with his. The phone slipped from her hand and clattered on the desk when she saw what it was. A cleaning woman, who had very likely entered the office through a back entrance no doubt ignorant of the chaos erupting around her, pushed her cleaning cart down the hall.

Andrew took off down the hall like a charging bull. Michonne jumped to her feet from where she leaned heavily against the desk and ran to put her face and hands against the glass. Opening her mouth to shout a futile warning, she barely had time to breathe before Andrew rushed the woman. He collided with the cart sending it smashing into the woman and in turn sent them both into the glass wall with a loud crash that cracked it.

"Oh Shit!" Michonne exclaimed as Andrew mauled the unsuspecting woman.

Her grip on the gun in her hand tightened as she stumbled back from the glass, away from the desk.

One-one thousand…

Two-one thousand…

Three-one thousand….

She looked left to the stairwell she'd come in through, judging her chances of getting to it before the entire wall cracked and fell to pieces.

Four…

Five …

Six…

Her heart thudded in her chest hard enough for her to hear it keeping time in her ears.

Seven...

Eight…

Nine…

She made a break for the stairs, the movement catching Andrew's attention. To Michonne's shock, the cleaning woman's head turned at an unnatural angle to track her movement as well. The woman's pupils were occluded and eyes bloodshot exactly like Andrew's and the two she'd encountered downstairs.

 _Ten._

She reached the door hitting the crash bar hard with her hip. In the same instant, both things were on their feet and crashing through the glass after her. Turning to keep her eyes on them as she stumbled into the stairwell, Michonne let off the first shot. It had been four years since she'd last touched a gun, let alone fired one. The first went wild, not even winging either of her pursuers. She had better luck with the second shot, mainly because there was far less space between her and them now. The second bullet entered dead center-mass, though it only made Andrew stumble back into the cleaning woman for a second. Always a quick study and actually a good shot once upon a time, Michonne put the next shot between Andrew's formerly blue eyes. His head whipped back hitting the woman, as she forced her way through the closing stairwell door, before dropping to the ground.

Turning to take the stairs two at a time, Michonne knew she'd barely paused the woman. She had a head start of seconds at best. Her heart raced in her chest, her throat and lungs on fire as she burned through oxygen almost faster than she could inhale it. She knew she wasn't gonna make it two more minutes let alone two more hours as she rounded the steps reaching yet another landing.

" _Ven aqui!_ " A voice shouted to her from a flight above. She looked up to see a face peering over the railing down at her. * _Come! Here, quickly! Quickly!_ *

Michonne practically sprang up the steps, finding the man who had hailed her on the landing with a woman holding the office door open. She ran up past him, headed toward the beckoning woman waving her in like a third base coach. When she arrived, the man smacked the cleaning lady, hot on Michonne's heels, with the long handle of a broom square in the midsection as soon as she hit the landing. The blow sent her flying back through the air. Michonne turned in time to see her sail back down the flight of stairs and hit the back wall with a force that surely broke her spine.

Michonne and her rescuers all stopped, returning to the stairway railing cautiously to look down. The woman lay crumpled at the bottom like a discarded piece of refuse. Then suddenly the body shuddered to life again, the eyes reopening.

The woman behind Michonne yelped in surprise and horror, clapping a hand over her mouth to cover the involuntary noise.

* _Inside! Inside!_ * The man commanded them in Spanish.

They scrambled back to the door pushing their way in together, nearly tumbling over each other to get through to the other side. The man pulled at the door and then leaned against it after it was firmly closed. Michonne looked around panicked. The floor layout was totally different than on the Consulate's level. It was completely open, the spaces delineated by cubicles.

* _What floor is this?_ * Michonne asked the man in his language when she was finally able to speak. She gulped at the air from a position bent over with her hands braced on her knees. She felt like she was going to either throw up or collapse.

* _Thirty-two_.* He answered looking her over, his eyes lingering on the gun she held pressed against her thigh. The other woman, who like Michonne was dressed in a business suit, stood near him too shocked to say anything. She trembled, silent tears running down her face.

They all jumped when the cleaning woman finally banged on the door. The man backed away from his position at the door as she screeched angrily behind it, throwing her body against the metal with enough force to be unnerving.

* _Come. Let's get away from this door._ * He ushered both women further into the office.

* _Thank you_.* Michonne finally had the presence of mind to say to the man and woman. * _She—_ *

* _Loida_.* He corrected Michonne sharply.

* _You knew her?_ * Michonne asked, trying to reconcile the woman she so recently was with the monster that, even now, still shook the door trying to get in.

The man nodded. * _She was my employee. I'm the supervisor for the janitorial crew of the building._ *

Michonne felt pained for the man and pained for herself that she couldn't allow herself even one moment of sympathy. * _Well, Loida turned just now, right in front of me and then tried to attack me. I think it's in the bites. Whatever it is that's turning everyone crazy. It's the bites that does it._ *

The man looked at her as if she was speaking another language entirely. He was a balding, stocky man, on the shorter side with discerning dark brown eyes, and a salt and pepper goatee set in a round, tan face. She noticed he wore a short-sleeved white dress shirt and a pair of chinos. He was basically as appropriately dressed for the end of the world as she was. Still, nothing she was saying seemed to surprise him in the least though Michonne got the distinct impression it was because he didn't believe a word of it.

"Do either of you speak _English_?" The woman finally cut in petulantly.

Both Michonne and the man looked at her in surprise. It was the first thing she'd said in minutes of quiet sobbing.

"Yes," Michonne said, straightening up to her full height.

"Yes."

The attractive brunette scoffed, rolling her brown eyes. "If you spoke English, why have I been talking to myself all morning?"

"I thought you liked to hear the sound of your own voice." He answered matter-of-factly in thickly-accented English. "You didn't seem all that interested in what I had to say anyway."

The woman huffed putting her hands on her hips indignantly.

"I'm Michonne." Michonne cut in abruptly before the absurd argument that was brewing came to a head.

"I'm Daniel." The man said extending his hand for her to shake.

"Karen." The brunette chimed in.

"Listen, do you know this building? I've got to get to the roof soon." Michonne asked the man as he sized her up.

"Yes, I know this building very well."

"Is there any other way up?"

"Sure, there are three other stair wells."

"How far to the roof?"

"Twenty floors."

Michonne groaned, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of her.

"What's on the roof?" Daniel asked eyeing her. Karen stared at them both watching the volley of the conversation.

Michonne checked her watch.

"In a little less than two hours, a helicopter filled with Marines." She said more hopeful than certain.

Daniel looked at her skeptically.

"I just gotta make it a couple more hours and they'll be there," Michonne said more to herself than them.

"Well, there's the Southeast, Northwest and Maintenance stairwells." He offered leading Michonne down an aisle.

"One of those things is in the Northwest, I heard it earlier." Karen offered up.

"Which is least used?"

"Easy. The Maintenance. There." He pointed.

"Okay, that's the one," Michonne said decisively.

A lonely stairway, with twenty floors between her and the roof. She released the clip from the gun and counted the bullets before replacing it, as Daniel and the other woman eyed her curiously. There were twelve rounds left.

She sighed heavily, oblivious to the looks she was getting.

"Are you a cop or something?" Karen asked suddenly.

"Do I look like a cop?" Michonne asked lifting up the back of her suit jacket and slipping the gun securely into the waistband of her skirt.

Karen nodded, looking at her wide-eyed with cautious optimism. To which Michonne chuckled.

 _She guessed she did_.

She'd been hanging with Rick Grimes and his close-security teams too long. But shoeless with bloodied knees and probably large sweat stains in the pits of her blouse, more than anything else, Michonne was certain she just looked a mess.

"Well, I'm not." She looked to Daniel again. "I'm just a lawyer trying to survive..."

* * *

09:40 EST

"Daniel, you ready?" Michonne asked slapping his knee encouragingly as she got up from the cold linoleum of the break room floor.

They'd been taking refuge in there for the past hour waiting out the clock ticking on the wall.

Daniel nodded grimly.

"How about you, Karen?"

"Yep," Karen answered, taking a shaky breath and getting to her feet as well.

It had taken a lot of convincing on Michonne's part to get them on board with a plan to race to the roof. Despite Michonne's explanations and assurances, Karen was deadset on waiting out the crisis on this floor. She was certain, at some point, the authorities would come. Whereas Daniel had just been highly skeptical. Michonne didn't know how to adequately explain to them that given what she'd witnessed on the streets, she knew without a doubt no rescue would be coming at all. Eventually, however, they'd reluctantly agreed.

Karen pulled her curly black mane together in her hands, twirling it into a tight bun and stripped off her blazer. Michonne did similarly, using her ruined nylons to pull her locs up off her neck and doffing her jacket entirely. Daniel watched them both silently cradling his broom handle in his arms. They walked single file behind him through the maze of cubicles to the door of the maintenance stairwell before pausing.

Michonne looked at them both, stepping to the front.

"We don't stop until we reach the roof. Not for anything. Not a breather, not a drink of water." Michonne eyed the bottle of water Karen carried in one hand wearily.

"We see one of those things, you go for the head, okay? _The head_." She reiterated for the fourth or fifth time. Having gone over the things she'd seen repeatedly in her mind, Michonne was now convinced that only damage to the brain or brainstem was capable of stopping them. An idea she'd shared with them vehemently.

Karen raised the large pair of scissors she held in her other hand up to show she understood. Daniel simply nodded.

A distance screech and subsequent scream from some other part of the building reverberated through a different stairwell. They all shuddered soberly, the stakes becoming clear once again.

"Okay," Michonne whispered finally, looking at her watch again.

They had to time this perfectly without the benefit of knowing what the exact ETA of the chopper was. According to Daniel, unauthorized roof access tripped an alarm which would attract any and all of those things in the building straight to them.

Michonne chose to take the lead although she knew that her weapon was virtually useless. If she used it before they got to the roof, they'd all be dead in the water.

"Ready?" She leaned against the door, hip checking the crash bar as gently as she could manage while holding the gun firmly in her hands before her. Her companions nodded once again and then she pushed.

The stair well was silent. _A potentially good sign._ In her bare feet, Michonne padded to the steps upward pointing the gun where she looked as she had been taught. Karen fell in behind her, with Daniel pulling up the rear after easing the door quietly shut behind them.

Eleven flights came and went uneventfully as they made their way steadily up before a face and body banged against the door on 43. Karen gasped, jumping back startled by the mangled, bloody visage pressed against the door. Her water bottle clattered to the floor as she dropped it. They all watched helplessly as it rolled off the landing, bouncing and sloshing loudly against the stairs as it obeyed gravity.

Daniel rolled his eyes, jaw clenched as his mouth became a thin line of irritation. "Go," he whispered, urging them all back to movement from their positions frozen in place.

There was a shriek from floors below followed by a seeming cacophony of moans and snarls from deep within the bowels of the building.

" _Mierda_ ," Daniel hissed Spanish expletives looking up the stairs at Michonne taking point. *I forgot the loading dock! It leads straight to this stairwell...and it's been open to the street since six*, he said in his native tongue.

Karen looked from one face to another on the verge of hysteria. "What?" She whispered frantically.

"Get up the freakin' stairs. NOW!" Daniel barked.

They all broke into a mad dash upward, the order of their previous ascent forgotten.

Howls and shrieks as if the stairs were filled with wild animals soon filled the stairwell relaying the horde's proximity.

Michonne bounded up the stairs, noting the flights as they went up. _Only six left_ , she saw as she tore past the 'forty-six' sign. The sound was gaining on them whether or not the things were as well. Michonne felt her chest tightening as she required more of her body than she ever had before. Racing up the second to last flight, she saw as Karen tripped.

Gripping her with a hand around her waist, Daniel nearly threw the woman up the next set of steps as Michonne turned on the rooftop landing to put at least a few yards between them and their closest pursuer.

"Go! Go!" She shouted, holding the line with her pistol as they scrambled up the last few stairs.

The finer points of the target practice Rick had insisted she take came back to her like muscle memory. Three, then four, then five head shots rang out all hitting home as the fire alarm/dinner bell rang out when Daniel opened the door. Pushing Karen through the door to the outside, Daniel doubled back passing Michonne and swinging the broom wildly at the things rushing up the stairs at them.

"Daniel!" Karen screamed from behind them on the rooftop.

"GO NOW!" He shouted back as Michonne stepped back and through the door to the roof still firing at anything near him.

She could hear the deafening buzz of a helicopter behind her, feel the wind picking up and swirling around her. Daniel was just about overrun as her clip emptied of all its rounds with a click. Throwing the gun down, Michonne heard the sound of automatic gunfire filling the air and knocking the closest things back.

She and Daniel turned and ran toward the far end of the expansive roof at the same time, behind Karen in the lead. Swarms of the undead things spilled out of the door and onto the rooftop.

Frantic, Karen rushed for the helicopter, reaching the edge of the building as it hovered as if preparing to land. She ran for the ledge, springing up on it and improbably leaping the distance between it and the chopper. Hands reached out for hers as she reached for them. Screaming in terror, her arms and legs flailed, searching for purchase from the thin air and getting none. She slipped through the men's grasps as Michonne saw her plummet, aghast.

Despite that, she approached the edge of the building with the same unstoppable momentum. Michonne realized she would have little choice but to do the same thing Karen had. The things were at their heels. The gunfire from two soldiers firing through the open door of the chopper tore up the rooftop but could only cut through so many of those things as they ran for her and Daniel. It was leap or be devoured.

"MICHONNE!" Another man, securely hooked into the chopper by the strap so he could lean all the way out standing with his feet on the chopper's landing skids, screamed. He pulled off his helmet. It was Rick.

"MICHONNE!" He shouted again struggling to be heard above the rotors. He whipped his arms around in big sweeping circles beckoning both her and Daniel frantically. "COME ON!"

"JUMP!" She could see his mouth moving though she couldn't quite hear it. The helicopter came fractionally closer, though still not alighting.

This would be a leap of faith. _Fortunately, trust had never been one of her and Rick's problems._ Michonne bolted across the remaining rooftop, springing one, two, three steps up to the ledge and vaulted.

She flew across the chasm—and the fifty-two story drop—her eyes never leaving Rick's until she was in his arms. He gripped her tightly to himself as her momentum propelled them both back inside the chopper safely. He grunted absorbing the impact, shielding her body.

Michonne turned her face out of his shoulder in time to see Daniel make the same jump. Rick's partners at the door caught him by the forearms and hauled him into the chopper while a fourth man continued firing on all the things trying to follow suit. The helicopter pulled up and away leaving scores of those things flying off the building in pursuit of them like humanoid lemmings.

"I'm okay, you're okay," Rick whispered again and again into her hair as she held onto him tightly long minutes after they'd cleared Atlanta's airspace. He pressed his lips to her forehead and rubbed her neck. "Remember?"

She nodded, clinging to Rick's flak jacket. Opening her eyes again, from where she'd closed them tight to avoid the horrors of witnessing the entire city in chaos on fire, she saw Daniel and his saviors staring at them.

Embarrassed, she finally released Rick, smoothing down her skirt and blouse. Knowing she must look a fright, she tried to compose herself.

"Thank you all so much. Michonne Philippe." She said officiously to the closest young man as he adjusted his flight helmet.

He shook her hand as if this was all perfectly normal. "PFC Glenn Rhee, Ma'am."

"Lance Corporal Daryl Dixon," the other sitting in the jumpseat on the side added gruffly.

Rick followed suit shaking Daniel's hand. "Captain Rick Grimes."

"Daniel Salazar," Daniel said shakily, still clearly trying to get his bearings. In the roughly three hours she'd known him, this was the most unnerved Michonne had ever seen the man. _Understandably_.

"If anyone cares, I'm T-Dog." The fourth man chimed in from the passenger seat in the cockpit giving them all a much-needed chuckle.

"Captain Grimes, where are we going exactly?" Daniel asked.

"We're headed to Ft. Benning. They're setting up a refugee camp there –for lack of a better term." He exchanged a meaningful glance with Michonne.

He and Michonne knew the truth about refugee camps first hand and prayed it was something a bit better than that.

"Uh, change of plans, Captain." The pilot came through their headsets loud enough to be heard even with the helmet off.

Rick picked up his helmet, pulling the earplug and the mic out.

"What?"

"We have new orders, Sir. We're to take you and Ms. Philippe straight to the _USS Ticonderoga_ off the coast." She answered through the mic.

"Hell no! My family is waiting for me at Benning. Now, once I see them and make sure they're okay, I'm fine with going out to the Ticonderoga but I'm not going anywhere without seeing my kids!"

There was a pause that Michonne knew spelled nothing but bad news. She glanced at Daniel who furrowed his brow probably thinking the same thing.

"I'm sorry to be the one to inform you, Sir…" The pilot struggled with the right words. "But the reports coming in as of an hour ago are that Ft. Benning was overrun."


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note**

 _OMG! Thank you so much! You guys and your comments are giving me my life daily! I'm so happy you like it so far. Honestly, it wasn't actually my intent to write an action/adventure when I started this. But the source material itself is so propulsive that you just end up coming out the gate running. To that end however, not every chapter is going to be anywhere near as breathless. Case in point, this chapter is significantly slower (I'd say most of the flashback chapters will be) but there's a lot of table setting being done and I hope y'all will enjoy that stuff too. Okay, onward...._

2010

Congo-Kinshasa, DRC

"Hey!"

Michonne stood in the marketplace in front of a stand filled with sweet cassavas rooting through the pile for one or two large ones. She had to make it fast. She was on her lunch break and needed to gather the items for the dinner she planned to cook that night. She stopped and did a full revolution, however, when she heard the familiar southern cadence, looking for its source.

A few feet to her left, Rick Grimes stood watching her, looking like a tall drink of water. He was incongruous amongst the hustle and bustle going on around him - in need of a good shave but otherwise painfully handsome, relaxed, male and most obviously, American. He leaned against a pole in his denim button-down that Michonne knew matched the blue of his eyes, which were currently hidden behind sunglasses. He had on a pair of black jeans and she didn't even have to look down to know also his dusty old cowboy boots. Sometimes, she forgot he wasn't from Texas with his affinity for the filthy things.

She smiled widely, genuinely surprised and pleased to see him.

"What are you doing here?"

"In the market?" He said coming closer, sidestepping a small vendor who rushed past them. "I was looking for flowers, actually."

"No, I mean in Kinshasa." Michonne asked dusting her hands on her pants before taking him into a warm embrace.

When she took the posting in Kinshasa, Michonne had known Rick was also in-country but in seven months they had yet to see one another until now. While work kept her in the DRC capital at the main Mission headquarters, Rick's kept him homebound at the Eastern Sector Mission HQ in Kisangani. She had heard he'd received a promotion to head the Security Management Team at the Mission. It was a job that meant he was now responsible for the safety of every single member of the UN staff in Kisangani. It was an enormous responsibility that meant he reported only to the Chief Security Advisor and the Head of Mission. To look at him now though, Michonne knew, the responsibility must be agreeing with him. He seemed happy. Still, it left her with the question, what was he doing a thousand kilometers away from his charges at her produce market?

"I'm here escorting Maggie Greene to the ESHQ." He explained. "I'm supposed to be picking her up in Brazzaville this afternoon and then accompanying her on to Kisangani in the morning."

"You're the one?" Michonne said delighted. "Maggie told me she had a detail. Must be nice, being the daughter of the new Assistant Secretary-General."

"I know _you're_ not talking." Rick laughed at Michonne, watching as she paid the cassava seller for her tubers, took the bag and walked on.

"You're right." She smiled blushing as much as her deep brown skin would allow. "But does she really need a security escort for a seven kilometer trip from the airport?"

"Well, bigwig daddy or not, the UN certainly wasn't about to pay an extra five-hundred bucks for a four minute flight to Kinshasa. Which just leaves the ferry and the better part of her day spent alone in wall-to-wall traffic waiting to get across."

Michonne nodded, empathetic to the hardship of the never-ending wait, with seemingly all of humanity, to cross the Congo River by ferry. The only other way to get across.

"I'm here a day early to make sure that the wait to cross is the only problem she has on her way to the Mission."

"But you're a little overpaid to babysit, no?" She glanced up at him but couldn't read his expression behind his aviators.

He smiled though.

"I'd say yes, but I had other business in the capital, people to see, so this was convenient."

"Makes sense," Michonne reconsidered as they walked through the market.

"You want to come along?" He suddenly suggested as he gently placed one hand on the small of her back guiding her through the labyrinth of bustling stalls.

It was amazing to Michonne how easily they fell back into old patterns as she let him lead the way out.

"In a hot car for three plus hours? Is 'Frack' with you?"

Rick frowned. She knew he disliked her habit of calling him and Shane "Rick and Frack" but that hadn't stopped her from doing it anyway.

"He is." Rick replied with a curt nod.

"I'll pass." Michonne said with a shrug. After all this time, it wasn't that she disliked Shane exactly. He was, in her many years of knowing him, just a personality for which she still had yet to acquire a taste. "Anyway, I gotta get this cassava in some water to soak if I plan to serve it for dinner tonight without killing anyone. Then I have to run back to work."

Rick actually looked disappointed, jaw tight as if he were on the verge of pouting.

"But hey! It's my apartment Maggie's supposed to be staying at. They were gonna put her up in a hotel for the night but I told her that's just silly. Why don't you stay for dinner with us when you drop her off?"

Michonne gave Rick a big smile as they stood on the street looking at each other.

It really was wonderful to see him. She hadn't realized until that moment how much she'd missed having him around. At other Missions where they'd both worked, Michonne grew accustomed to seeing him sitting in the small office he invariably shared with Shane and other guys in the Protection Coordination Units, inviting her out for a cold beer occasionally after a rough day, escorting her around on assignments that were potentially hairy, he'd always been there. Rick, and for better or worse, Shane had been relative constants in her life for nearly six years. Even during their times at home in the States, once or twice, she'd seen them - like at Hershel's annual July Fourth barbeque in Buckhead. She couldn't have escaped them if she tried. But now here they were in the same country yet again, but for once separated by many miles. It was weird.

Michonne grumbled. "...tell Frack he can come too." She added begrudgingly.

Rick smiled, reaching down to give her another quick hug as they parted ways. "Will do."

She held her plastic bag of tubers to her chest as she backed away.

"By the way, you forgot your flowers. Who were they for anyway?" She asked unable to go until she'd sated her curiosity. _Lori was more than eleven thousand miles away and he'd known Maggie since she was fifteen years old._ Plus, honestly, Rick didn't seem like a flowers and candy type of guy.

Rick rubbed his scruffy jawline with his knuckles and smiled crookedly. When he spoke next his voice dripped with that Southern charm. "C'mon, Michonne. You're a bright woman. Think…."

Michonne furrowed her brow in thought as the space between them grew while they moved farther and farther apart on the street. The city sounds of cars and trucks and other people started to interfere.

"They were for _you_." He pointed and mouthed at the same time.

Michonne blushed invisibly and smiled turning to head back toward the job.

* * *

"You're ridiculous! If you think that, what are you even doing here?" Maggie asked incredulously.

Michonne looked over her wine glass at Rick wearily. As usual they didn't even have to speak for Rick to know what she was saying and transmit his own thoughts back.

 _This was a bad idea._

He dug a fork into the spicy marinated potatoes on his plate and tried not to roll his eyes at his friend.

It wasn't as if they wouldn't have met anyway, they'd just spent three very long hours trapped together in a car and had a two hour flight back to Kisangani tomorrow to look forward to together. Even still, putting Shane Walsh and Maggie Greene together at a dinner was a bad idea. They argued non-stop.

They argued politics - both American and Congolese. They argued about the UN mission in this country and others. They even argued the Atlanta Braves versus the New York Mets, which aside from being a rivalry that was essentially defunct, didn't even make sense since Shane hated New York.

Rick and Michonne had attempted to interject once or twice to little effect and zero success. Despite the fact that they were making their companions miserable, Shane and Maggie seemed to be enjoying the rancor. Which led directly to the next problem. As much as Rick hated it, this was Shane's pattern. Women either fell for him and his ridiculous brand of charm immediately or they fell for it in the long run. The only women that Rick had ever seen who were somehow immune were Lori and Michonne. Rick tried not to consider the larger implications of that.

So now they were arguing animatedly, neither giving an inch of ground to the other, though Rick was certain most of it on Shane's side was just teasing. Still, Rick knew it was just a matter of time before Maggie succumbed. Looking at Michonne's somewhat pained expression, he knew she was thinking the same thing. Rick tried to be realistic about it. Maybe this time around Shane would finally learn his lesson. Or perhaps breaking the heart of the Assistant Secretary-General's daughter would stick a fork in Shane's UN career, officially finishing it. And maybe that was for the best.

Rick sighed audibly as he continued to shovel the delicious potatoes and savory chicken into his mouth.

"I just don't see why they can't be allowed to be self-governing," Shane said with surprising sincerity. Even Michonne sat up and took notice for a moment.

"It's only self-governance if the people get a say. These rebels are pillaging the towns and villages and strong-arming people. Where's the agency or autonomy in that? They're not representing the people." Maggie insisted.

"Who do you think these so-called 'rebels' are but the people, Sweetheart." Shane used his most honeyed accent on her.

Shane had joined the UN organization after Rick so he didn't know the Greene Family the way Rick did. He hadn't been there for the death of Hershel's wife Annette and seen the ferocity with which Hershel protected his daughters. There was a chance that if he had he wouldn't have decided to play his games with the pretty young woman now.

"I just can't believe you're a sympathizer!"

"Don't paint me with that brush when you're using that word like they're Nazis. I just believe people have a right to espouse their beliefs and defend them if necessary -whether or not those beliefs run counter to the 'prevailing winds'." Shane made air quotes with his fingers as Maggie scoffed.

Rick threw back the remainder of the bourbon in his glass to avoid rolling his eyes.

He'd heard Shane saying all of this before. He wasn't sure when it was that his friend had suddenly decided to develop an opinion on the work they do. Especially one that wasn't exactly in line with the official position of the UN. Luckily, they were some of the very few employees in their organization that were not required to have an opinion. So, Rick had reasoned it was okay. But now as Shane and Maggie went at it, around and around, for the past half hour, he was just about sick of it.

Maggie smiled sweetly, if not sincerely and sighed. She pushed the remainder of her meal around on her plate with her fork as she spoke in dulcet tones to match Shane's. "It's good that you feel this passionately about this…"

"Oh I feel passionately about _all sorts_ of things, Darlin,'" Shane said with a grin.

"Okay. Anybody interested in some Ginger cake?" Michonne cut in there, clearly hitting her upper limit like Rick.

"What's that?" Shane said turning up his nose.

"The thing you'll taste if you try some," Michonne said with irritation as she stood to pick up the plates off the table in front of them.

Maggie shook her head, declining as Michonne took her plate.

Rick followed suit, picking up his own plate.

"More whiskey, Brother?" Shane asked picking up the bottle between them and helping himself.

"No, remember I'm driving." Rick said following Michonne into her small kitchen with his dishes.

"Yep. More for meee!" Shane said with glee offering Maggie some although she was drinking wine.

"It's not whiskey, idiot. It was made in Kentucky." Michonne whispered under her breath as she put the plates in the sink roughly.

"He doesn't mean anything," Rick said by way of apology handing Michonne his plate. "And I gotta admit, I don't really know the difference myself."

"You weren't supposed to hear that." Rick and Michonne both chuckled lightening the mood. "I have to admit I'm a bit of a Scotch snob."

"...And there it is." Rick said with a smile as he leaned against the wall near her refrigerator.

"There what is?" She asked leaning against the sink directly opposite.

"The flaw. The thing that makes you human. I knew if I waited long enough, it would reveal itself. You had me going for a long time though, I gotta say."

Michonne laughed. "Is this your way of saying I'm too hard on your friend? Am I unreasonable?"

RIck shook his head. "No, not at all. it's just as I said. It's me saying you're not perfect."

"And neither is Shane, but he's a good guy...I get it." Michonne sighed heavily.

"'Chonne, you're not getting me." Rick said standing up and walking toward her. He put his hands on either side of hers on the sink invading her personal space.

Her eyes widened like platters as he loomed over her.

This close Rick could see clearly the brown swirls of her irises. "I'm saying that you are virtual perfection...but a scotch snob. It's just an observation. Everyone has a flaw. There are worse ones to have."

He smiled and then she did bashfully, causing Rick's heart to speed to a gallop as he got lost in her eyes.

 _What was he doing?_

"It's corn versus rye basically." She muttered suddenly, her eyes looking down to his mouth as he licked his lips.

"What?" He asked, his confusion causing him to come back to his senses. He stepped back, suddenly thinking of his wife and son and their life together. _When was the last time he'd gone home to see Lori and Carl?_ Nearly a year. They weren't even supposed to be at a post that long technically.

"The basic difference between bourbon and whiskey is corn vs. rye...or barley if it's Scotch." She continued.

Rick watched as the look of apprehension on Michonne's face disappeared as he backed away. What the hell had he been thinking?

 _One glass of bourbon or whiskey or whatever and he'd nearly lost his mind_.

"And where it's made." She added. "It's only Bourbon if it's from Kentucky."

"I think I knew that." He said with a nod.

"Or Scotch from Scotland."

"Good to know."

"Know what?" Shane asked barging into the small space. There was just enough space for him and Michonne to stand comfortably separated. Shane made the space tight.

"Did you know it's only really Scotch if it's from Scotland?" Rick recovered quickly.

"Everybody knows that, buddy." Shane winked at Michonne and clapped Rick on the shoulder. "Say where's the cake you promised me? Mags and I were getting lonely out there."

"Don't call her Mags," Michonne warned as Maggie spoke up from the dining table feet away.

" _Don't_ call me Mags."

Shane laughed. "In stereo! Got it."

Rick really had no idea what he was going to do with his friend. He'd been in rare form tonight. It was time to just go.

"Michonne, dinner was delicious but we gotta be back at the crack of dawn to pick Maggie up so we do need to go get some sleep."

"What about my cake? I was promised cake, Imma need some cake." Shane said sticking out his bottom lip for Michonne.

"Oh my God! I'll give you a slice to-go. You're like my ex's best friend Terry. Get on my last nerve." She pushed Shane out of the kitchen.

Rick was surprised to hear this news.

"Ex?" Rick was doubly glad suddenly that he'd kept his hands to himself. "You and Mike broke up?"

He'd met Michonne's boyfriend once or twice at UN functions stateside. He seemed like a good enough guy. A lawyer like her and all around good egg that worked in the Fulton County D.A.'s office.

Michonne pulled the cake out of her refrigerator and began slicing it with her back to him.

"Yeah, it was becoming too much. He said it didn't make sense to keep trying, I'm away too much of the time. And you know we weren't together that long."

"Three years is a long time!" Rick said unbelieving of that explanation.

"Not when you're only home for two to three month stints at a time." Michonne said, her shoulders drooping in defeat.

Along those lines, Rick suddenly wondered what that meant for him and Lori. Married for thirteen years, ten of which he'd spent away for extended periods. It seemed like a good, long, solid marriage but he supposed if he added up all the time they'd spent together in that whole duration, their relationship might only be a bit longer than the total length of Michonne and Mike's. It was a frightening thought. Compounding that was the realization of how much of his son's life that meant he had been missing. _When he got back to Kisangani, what he needed to do was put in his papers._

"You okay?" Michonne said when she turned around and looked at his face.

Rick knew he must have looked like he saw a ghost, but what he was really seeing was his life flashing before his eyes. Still, he nodded.

Michonne put Shane's piece of cake wrapped in paper towel in his hands.

"Good, I'm okay too." She smiled completing their ritual from the protection assignments and they both paused to take a breath.

"I put an extra piece in there for you in case you change your mind." She added after a moment.

Rick smiled.

 _Why was it that only when he was with Michonne that he feel like he could be still, that he could turn his brain off and be in the moment?_

She let her hands linger in his for a moment longer than necessary before removing them.

"Now, you and that orangutan you call a friend, get the hell out of my house."

Rick laughed, turning to say his goodnights to Maggie and collect Shane.


	8. Chapter 8

7/25/15 11:40 EST

 _USS Ticonderoga (150 miles off the Coast of Savannah, GA)_

 _Benning was overrun._

After that news, the rest of the flight had been spent in virtual silence.

Rick looked around the cabin. Private Rhee sat, strapped in at the doorway with his gun at the ready while Dixon napped, or at the very least rested his eyes. The older man, Daniel, sat looking around, taking everything in. Rick could tell a lot was going on behind the man's eyes but his face was a mask. If any of the morning's developments fazed him, he was doing an excellent job of hiding it. Then on the other side of Daniel, Michonne sat staring at her hands. Rick wanted to be nearer to her but he knew he couldn't. He'd behaved badly.

When the news on Benning came in, Rick had moaned, deep in his chest like all the life had been squeezed out of his heart. That's what it had felt like too, an excruciating pressure that made breathing hard and his heart feel like it had stopped. He clawed at his flight suit trying to loosen the zippers and straps before doubling over into Michonne's lap and crying there for long minutes while she stroked his hair. The idea of the creatures he'd just seen going after his kids? Attacking Lori? It was pure agony. The thought that he hadn't been there to protect them, confirming all of the worse accusations Lori had lobbed at him during their divorce proceedings was almost beyond bearing. But wasn't it now true?

 _Hadn't he been preoccupied with rescuing and protecting Michonne when his own family needed him more than ever?_

Just the thought of it had made him nauseous. He roughly pulled himself out of her arms, moving away from her abruptly as he turned to face the door. Waves of anguish washed over him until he felt like he was drowning. When he came back to himself finally and turned, hoping to speak with Michonne, he saw she'd gone to sit on the other side of the chopper, putting Daniel between them. He supposed he deserved that. It wasn't Michonne's fault that he'd chosen her. That, as Lori had begun to allege there at the end, that he _always_ chose her...even when she wasn't around.

Rick sighed with bone-crushing fatigue, looking out over the sparkling dark blue Atlantic as the Ticonderoga and the rest of the Carrier Battle Group with it came into view. The large US Navy Cruiser was impressive in its size and austere beauty as one amongst a group of eight ships surrounding a massive aircraft carrier. They all sat in the sea of water like a formidable mechanized archipelago that normally would have been astonishing to behold. But Rick couldn't help to wonder, built to defend the nation against enemies both foreign and domestic, what chance did they possibly stand against a threat like this one?

From the depths of his despair, for just a moment, he could see some humor in it. In less than twenty-four hours, the whole world had gone topsy-turvy, and other than as floating refugee camps, what purpose did large war machines like these serve anymore? Maybe he was being a fatalist, or maybe he was just punch-drunk from lack of sleep and running on adrenaline fumes, but he just didn't see the point.

After another moment, Rick glanced over at Michonne again and saw her looking back, out at the distant horizon from whence they came. She was no doubt contemplating the devastation they'd witnessed, the towns and cities they had passed reduced to nothing. In his anguish, he realized then, he'd forgotten that she'd most likely lost people too. Michonne was an orphan but there was an aunt over in Conyers, he thought he remembered her saying, and a cousin that was like a sister to her. _Everyone in this chopper had most likely lost their whole family, what made him think his grief was somehow special?_ That idea brought with it another emotional wave, this time of humility. He was entitled to his pain of course, but then so was everyone else. He owed it to them to pull himself together and more importantly, he owed Michonne an apology.

"ETA, two minutes." The pilot's voice came over the comm.

Dixon's eyes popped open as he straightened up and strapped back into his seat belt. Without speaking he pointed to Daniel and Michonne indicating that they should too, which they did obediently. Rhee pulled himself back into the cabin releasing his M16 to hang at his side as he sat and secured himself in a jump seat. Rick closed his eyes and tried not to see his son and daughter being eviscerated by fiends.

Afterward, he wasn't sure how it had been possible but in the minute and a half it took them to land, he managed to fall asleep.

"Rick," Michonne said in a harsh whisper, jostling him with her hand around the arm of his vest. "We're here."

A boatswain's mate came to the mouth of the chopper door and reached a hand to her help her down as Rick came to. Private Rhee and another crewman helped her and Daniel away from the chopper crouching and covering their heads from the whirling rotor blades. Rick hung back to do a little housekeeping.

"You good, sir?" The Yellowshirt asked him as he slowly made his way down onto the deck unaided.

"Yup." Rick said tiredly. He hadn't realized until that moment how in need of a few minutes of shut-eye he was.

"Excuse me, Sir, but can you tell me, any word on Nashville? They aren't telling us squat out here." Through his goggles, Rick could see the earnest pleading in the young man's eyes.

"Son, I don't know anything specific but judging by Atlanta, I'm sorry. It doesn't look good." Rick hated being the bearer of news like that. He patted the young man's shoulder comfortingly and looked around for their pilot.

Besides being a hell of an airman, who got them up and out of North Carolina at breakneck speed, she'd had nerves of steel during the rescue operation and remained calm when Rick threatened to freak out onboard. He didn't know if there was any beer aboard this vessel but he knew he owed her a cold glass of something in the near future. Walking up to LCpl. Dixon as he spoke to the pilot with a comforting hand on her arm, Rick cleared his throat and addressed them both.

"I wanna thank you guys for leaving your families and your lives to do this. I'm sure it was a difficult decision, whether or not it's also your job," he said solemnly.

The pilot took off her helmet, stuffing it under her arm awkwardly and threw the other hand up in a salute while the Lance Corporal straightened up and did the same.

"At ease." Rick said dispensing with the formalities quickly.

Both relaxing, the pilot ran her hand quickly through her short, salt and pepper hair ruffling it. She was an attractive woman that was probably about his age, if Rick were forced to guess. "It's all in a day's work, Captain." She said diplomatically.

Rick looked to Corporal Dixon, but he remained as he had the entire morning, silent and then he shrugged. Rick wondered at the younger man with the sorrowful eyes, who had said perhaps three sentences in almost six hours.

"Call me Rick. So where y'all from?" Rick asked, pressing the subject though he knew he shouldn't. He couldn't help himself.

"Peletier, Sir. Carol." The pilot said reaching to shake his hand. "Originally, I'm from Tallahassee but my ex-and my kid are down in Pensacola right now."

"Were." She corrected herself grimly after a moment. "…um, if you don't mind Captain, I mean Rick. I gotta go see if I can get through to the Naval Station down there."

"Go." Rick said dismissing her with the requisite salute.

"And you?" He asked of Dixon as the man watched Peletier race across the deck until she had disappeared into the bowels of the ship.

"I'm from all over. Army brat." He finally said, his voice surprisingly gravelly with a hint of a backwater southern accent. A Cajun originally if Rick were forced to guess. "No family. 'cept a brother up in Joliet."

Rick nodded understandingly.

"The Pen." Dixon clarified. "You think they're safe inside? I mean that's gotta be one of the safest places to be, right? No one can get out, but no one can get in either, right?"

"Yeah," Rick said even though he felt doubtful. Given no one knew how this illness was spreading, he doubted there was a safe place anywhere…even this boat.

The look on Dixon's face seemed to indicate he saw through Rick's attempt at hopefulness. Rick knew then he needed to do better than that for a man who had just helped save, not only his life, but two others as well with no reward in the offering.

"Look," He tried again.

"Dad!"

The word cut through Rick like a bullet as he turned to see his son, Carl running toward him. Not far behind him, as he sprinted across the deck and into his father's arms, was Michonne holding his daughter Judith and Beth Greene, Hershel's daughter. Carl ran into Rick's chest with the force to knock him back into the side of the helicopter.

"Carl?" Rick said not believing his eyes. They watered as he held his son to him kissing the top of his head. "What? What are you doing here?"

"Beth got us on the last evac helicopter off the base."

He looked up and saw Michonne approaching with his baby. "How?"

Beth smiled bashfully as she stood off to the side. "Daddy always told me if something happened to get his credentials out of the safe and get to Ft. Benning. And that's what I did. I just met them there."

The petite blonde girl just shrugged humbly.

"Smart girl." Dixon chimed in from Rick's side. He'd forgotten the man was even standing there as he clutched his son to him.

"Are you guys okay?" He asked looking from Carl to Judith, sitting contentedly on Michonne's hip.

He reached out and stroked his daughter's plump, ruddy cheek. Exchanging a glance with Michonne he knew without saying, that all was forgiven from the helicopter. He would still apologize at some point but he knew she had already absolved him of his bad behavior.

"Wait, where's your mother? Where's your grandfather?" Rick asked finally coming back to reality.

Carl looked up at him and his face crumpled. He buried his head in his father's midsection as Rick held him tightly.

Michonne's expression grew grave and Beth looked anywhere but at Rick.

"Where's Lori?" Rick asked again as if they hadn't heard him the first time.

"Hershel's credentials allowed Beth to take two people, Lori insisted that it be Carl and Judith." Michonne explained as delicately as she could.

"So you _left_ her?" Rick asked Beth incredulously, an accusation lingering in the air.

"Rick!" Michonne chastised him softly. "The soldiers would only allow Beth two people. And _Lori_ made a decision."

She spoke firmly as the teenager's bottom lip quivered and tears streamed down her face.

"I don't understand. Judy's a baby. They couldn't fit one more person?"

"Judith," Michonne spoke calmly and soothingly as she bounced the baby on her hip. "Is a _person_. And for the _third_ time, Beth was only allowed two of those."

Rick's eyes welled up. Just as he'd been trying to confront the idea of his whole family perishing, they'd been restored to him but now there was the pain of knowing yet again who he'd lost. He kissed his son's head again and then took a deep breath.

"Beth, I'm sorry." He said in all sincerity, reaching out and gripping her arm. "Thank you. Thank you so much."

Squeezing Carl's shoulder, the young boy finally let go and stepped back. Michonne handed Judith to Rick and he took her and nuzzled her to him. Her warmth and baby smell were a balm to his soul. Losing Lori and to a far lesser extent his father, was gutting but having his kids was a god send. Proof positive that something was still going on Upstairs, even if Rick had no idea what it was.

"Captain, you and Ms. Philippe are needed downstairs." PFC Rhee returned from below decks to inform them.

Yesterday, Rick didn't know this kid existed and today he was Rick's new best friend, attached to his hip and indispensable. How he'd been able to do anything before this fresh-faced Asian kid came into his life, Rick wasn't sure.

Rick looked down at his son. "I gotta go talk to some people, but I'll find your bunk just as soon as I'm finished, okay?" He ran a hand over Carl's head and squeezed his shoulder again reassuringly.

"Don't give Bethie any trouble." Rick said putting on his "Dad" hat and its accompanying stern face for a moment.

Carl nodded as Rick handed Judith to Beth.

"Thank you again Beth, I won't ever be able to repay what you've done for Lori and I today." Rick said solemnly looking briefly at Michonne to see if she approved.

She did.

Beth nodded and turned to lead Carl and Judith back down to the lower decks.

LCpl. Dixon, who had stood silently watching the proceedings, followed them down. "If we hafta get off this boat, I'm stickin' wit' you, Supergirl." Rick heard him say to her as they walked away.

"How did you find them?" He asked Michonne a moment later as they followed Rhee down.

"They found me. Apparently, Hershel called them and told them we were coming." Michonne reported matter-of-factly.

He couldn't believe it.

"As soon as she used his credentials, Hershel was alerted and then he made sure their ride was diverted to this ship so we could meet." Michonne smiled as Rick took a deep breath.

Then the smile disappeared just as quickly. "Rick, I'm so sorry about Lori and your dad. I didn't know him but I know he must have been great to have a son like you."

"Not really." Rick admitted. Still, when he'd asked his dad to do this thing for him, the old man had come through and that was something Rick knew he shouldn't forget. "But thank you."

Michonne reached for his hand just as they entered the narrow stairwell leading down. She squeezed it comfortingly. He held on as she attempted to let go. She glanced back at him with a question in her eyes. But now that he'd gotten her back, safely and in one piece, save some cuts and bruises, he didn't think he'd be able to let her go. After a moment, she seemed to understand and let him hang on.

He released her finally as they arrived at the helicopter hangar which had been repurposed as a war room. The large space was filled with people sitting, working, talking, strategizing, arguing. Five large screens fed the room with different information. One featured a map of the world overlaid by a countdown clock in one corner. One appeared to be a video link to a conference call. One featured live feeds from what were probably some of the last news stations globally still broadcasting. The others featured various numbers, coordinates and data. This room was clearly one of the nerve centers from which they planned to figure out what the hell was happening all around them.

Rhee led them to a small stage and a make-shift conference table around which numerous people, including military officers far Rick's superior, were making plans. As they walked up, an argument was taking place.

"Stu, I swear to God, if you say that word again, I'm gonna kick your ass so bad you'll taste my shoe leather for a week!" One man that Rick was nearly certain was a four star general said, standing up from his chair.

"What? _Zombie_?" As the man called Stu said it again seemingly innocently, the group groaned collectively and the General had to be physically restrained, albeit just with a hand to his shoulder.

"Gentlemen!" The sole woman at the table said trying to get them to settle down. "Gentlemen, please."

"Get the Deputy Secretary on screen." she instructed one of her underlings. "They're here."

Rick and Michonne walked up the grated, metal stairs to the platform staging area where this meeting was taking place, the group parted for them. Two people got up to offer them seats, which they both declined.

"You'd think they were the saviors of the world to hear Greene talk about it. Don't look like much to me." One man whispered to another loudly enough for Rick to hear.

"Thank you for coming, Captain, Ms. Philippe. Secretary Greene says you're his best team." The woman said gesturing them closer.

"Thank you, Madam Secretary." Rick responded as he realized who he was talking to. "Thank you for saving my kids."

The Secretary of State, a diminutive brunette with a steely gaze, smiled and shook her head. "I'm glad we were able to. There's been a shortage of happy-endings today."

Rick had only to look around the table at the strained and dour faces of those surrounding them to see the truth of her words. Some of the men looked around as if fighting back their emotions while others twisted their wedding rings nervously.

"Luckily, my family and I happened to be all together here vacationing at Hilton Head or I don't know what would have happened. As it was, my son had to watch Secret Service agents gun down his girlfriend..." Her mouth was a grim line as she trailed off unable to finish the story.

"Are we up yet?" She said instead a second later, turning to the large video screen.

The screen blinked to life and then Hershel was there. Rick was shocked by how much stress could age a person and how quickly. He had seen Hershel only two months prior at a General Assembly meeting in New York and he had looked easily ten years younger than he looked up on that screen. Now, he looked old, disheveled and as if he hadn't eaten, bathed, slept or changed clothes in days. Michonne actually gasped quietly.

"Rick, Michonne, I'm so glad to see you. Deanna, gentlemen." He greeted the group, exhaling and attempting a wan smile, clearly unaware of how he looked. "As you see, I couldn't get you up to New York. That had been the plan when we thought we could hold the UN building. That wasn't possible, so now we're in a bunker."

"How are _you_ doing, Deputy Secretary?" Michonne asked, clearly wanting to ask more but remaining aware that this wasn't a personal call.

"Well, we're far fewer than we were originally and frankly, we're at a loss." Hershel admitted.

It hit Rick yet again at that moment just how well and royally screwed they all were. The day when Hershel Greene, one of the premiere diplomats and change-agents, literally in the world, was at a loss for a solution to a crisis, all hope may truly have been lost. He looked at Michonne and saw her coming to the same realization.

"How can we help?" Rick said deciding to cut to the chase.

The General, Mayweather, if Rick remembered his name correctly, took the lead sliding a folder across the table toward them. "In South Korea, forty-five hours ago, the CIA flagged a personal email exchange from an officer in the Joint Security Area of the Demilitarized Zone to a colleague in Seoul, containing the word "zombie". We haven't had contact with anyone in the DMZ since. Twenty hours later, all of South Korea went dark."

Michonne picked up the folder reading the contents intently.

"…We believe that that ROK officer was our canary in the coalmine. We believe what he may have encountered was our Patient Zero. A victim or test subject for some kind of new biological agent developed by the North Koreans that got out of hand. Now, if we knew where this thing started – "

A tall, bespectacled man sitting to the right of the Secretary of State laughed derisively. All eyes turned to him as he shook his head and pushed his glasses further up on the bridge of his nose.

"What's funny, Milton? You have something to add?" The General said sighing.

"Only what I keep saying. That none of you have any idea what you're talking about. This is not a weaponized flu or some superbug! Listen to me, this is a retrovirus, rewriting people at the genetic level on the fly. Turning them into mindless, walking, slobbering," He laughed at his own unfortunate joke, "disease vectors."

The man named Stu spoke up again, "And just _how_ do we know this isn't man-made, Dr. Mamet?"

Dr. Milton Mamet rolled his eyes as if Stu and just about every person sitting with him at the table were about as intelligent as preschoolers.

"Because Director Leahy, if anyone, let alone North Korea, had the means to accomplish what you're suggesting they would have effectively cornered the market on cures for every major modern disease from AIDS to Ebola! And we would have heard about it. Scientists are nothing, if not braggarts. I don't know about you but I'd love to hold the international patents on that. I mean, wouldn't you? Make enough money to fill General Mayweather and Claremont here's war chests well into the next Millennium."

Mayweather took umbrage as did half the audience at the table, while the other half nodded in consideration, mulling over of what the doctor was telling them. Claremont just rolled his eyes and shook his head as if Mamet was a recalcitrant child.

"So you know this, how?" Michonne spoke up for the first time. "Have you been able to study one of these…things?" She asked, lowering her voice deliberately. The group quieted immediately straining just to hear her.

Rick stifled a grin knowing that was one of Michonne's many tricks to command attention and cut down on side conversations amongst an unruly group. Mamet straightened up as if being called out, clearing his throat before speaking.

"Well, no," he admitted.

There was more and louder grumbling this time. Rick feared a lynch mob was forming for the doctor.

It was Hershel who spoke up this time from the video screen. "So then, again doctor we ask, how do you know this?"

"Well, I don't."

More outrage ensued, to which he put up his hand in protest, trying to silence the group.

"B-but no, listen to me please, n-no scientist is ever going to tell you they 'know' anything. No real scientist anyway. What I can tell you is what I _hypothesize_."

Michonne nodded, clearly approving. If she agreed, being the smarter of the two of them Rick had always been certain, he knew he agreed as well. Everyone else might have been willing to throw the young doctor overboard but Mamet had Michonne, Hershel and the Secretary of State's undivided attention. That was good enough for Rick.

"And that is what? Based on what?" Michonne reiterated her question.

"That is that based on video surveillance footage, eyewitness accounts, what small amount of genetic materials we've been able to examine under the microscope…whatever it is, this thing exists only to spread. It has no alternate objective than to proliferate. Requiring only basic brainstem functions, and dispensing with the rest...hence, 'zombies'."

"Look," Dr. Mamet jumped up, grabbing a marker and started scribbling on a dry erase board that stood behind his side of the table. Everyone there turned to look.

"It's like a Trojan horse—The virus is using our DNA as the intermediary to infiltrate and reprogram its host, in this case, us. Once it's gotten inside our cells, the virus uses its own RNA to produce more viral DNA which is a backwards way of doing it, hence the 'retro' part."

"Speed up the bio course, Milt." General Claremont insisted.

Milton frowned but complied. "Once the new DNA is incorporated, the host cells treat the viral DNA as part of it, translating and transcribing new genes, making new copies of the virus. Because it's happening at a genetic level it's difficult for antibodies to detect and defend against until the host is completely infected by which time it's too late. Like all viruses, it probably started long ago in the primordial soup, changing and adapting until it perfected both its means of transmission and proliferation...its payload delivery system, for the warmongers in the room."

Mayweather grumbled, but nodded for Mamet to finish.

"...And considering how devastating it is to the human body, it is truly analogous to a nuclear bomb. It has clearly learned it has to move quickly and move on before it exhausts the physical resources of its host. Quick transmission, quick infection, rinse, repeat, with mindless efficiency." He said finishing up at the board as everyone looked on transfixed.

"At this point, it's got it down to, forgive the pun, a science. Right now, unimpeded, this pathogen will persist indefinitely. It will burn through humanity until we're wiped out and then return to its dormancy."

"Dormancy?" The Secretary of State said soberly at the same time as Hershel.

"So, you think that this has been around, just waiting?" Rick piped up, his stomach suddenly clenching into a painful knot.

Mamet nodded, touching his glasses like a nervous tick. " _I think_ that we've done a lot of hypothesizing about what exactly would wipe us out like the dinosaurs and today, we might just have gotten our answer. This, two ladies and many gentlemen, is humanity's Extinction-Level Event."


	9. Chapter 9

February 2011

Kisangani, DRC

Michonne was late _again_.

She'd only been at the Eastern Sector HQ for three weeks and she'd already managed to be late for work eight days. It was embarrassing.

 _That's what she got for living "off-campus"._

Nearly everyone that worked at the Mission lived within two square blocks of it, but not Michonne. Wanting to get a feel for the communities that made up Kisangani, she had chosen to live in its _Tshopo_ commune, well away from the protected enclave of the Mission in centralized _Makiso_. When she stood in the window of her small apartment overlooking the tranquil bank of the Tshopo river, well away from the city center, it always seemed like a brilliant idea. Now however, when she was going to be late yet again she wondered if it was worth it. In all of her planning, she'd failed to take into account traffic in the bustling small city. Kisangani's form of gridlock included far more pedestrians and bicycles than, say a New York or Nairobi, but it was still managing to prevent Michonne from getting to work on time.

As she rushed off one of the municipal buses a block away from the Mission, she imagined Rick's face when she got into the office. He'd been the one of her friends most vocally against her choice of residence. Which was understandable as he was the security chief and the one responsible for staff safety. He'd also been the one to offer her a daily morning lift from a security officer. She had declined that, naturally, as she suspected he knew she would. It was an unnecessary use of the staff resources and made her feel like some sort of diva.

Still, as she checked her watch yet again and thought of what his face would look like standing in the lobby of the building waiting patiently for her, sometimes she wished she had just taken the ride. It was just all so insufferably smug— although technically, he never actually looked particularly smug when she encountered him every morning. But she was positive the 'I told you so' was forever implied in his actions.

 _Rick._ Michonne moved a little a faster down the sidewalk as she thought of him waiting there for her to arrive.

* * *

"He likes you, you know."

Michonne looked at her friend, the normally rational staff doctor Clara Lissouba and laughed. She reached across their small table and pulled the napkin under Clara's margarita away from her.

"Hey!" Clara objected wetly, grabbing her drink before it got too far away.

"You might have had one too many of these, I think."

"What? It's not like I'm lying. Rick is crazy about you!" Clara declared loudly.

"Shh, keep your voice down!" Michonne looked around the little cantina hoping that no one had overheard her tipsy friend.

As it was, the place was filled with people they knew. The Chief Security Advisor and Rick's boss, Matheo Fournier, sat only a few feet away but fortunately was engaged in his own conversation. Though it had been Michonne's idea to get a couple drinks at the local UN watering hole _Al Este de Oaxaca,_ a genuine Mexican restaurant owned by a transplant and former UN employee, it seemed that her friend Clara was the one having all the fun. A couple hours in and Clara was already three sheets to the wind. Michonne could hardly have blamed her, of course. On a Friday night, with no clinic duties in the morning, she was certainly entitled to let loose a little. Still, it occurred to Michonne then that this was perhaps a little too loose.

"Look, I'm not telling you to act on it. I'm just saying that it's adorable the way he dotes on you."

Michonne scoffed thinking of the gallant way Rick behaved around all the women in the office. That was just his good, old-fashioned, polite Southern upbringing.

"That's just his way. He's a Southern boy." She confirmed.

Clara took another swig of her drink sloppily. "Oh don't give me that, I went to UT, don't forget. I've had my fill of 'southern boys'." The African woman said then stuck a finger into her mouth and pretended like she was gagging.

"Well, Austin ain't Georgia, honey. I promise you they make 'em like him back in Georgia. Grow 'em like weeds, in fact." Michonne put on her thickest accent for effect and then they both giggled.

"So then how do you explain Shane?" Having only been in the Eastern Mission six months longer than Michonne, it was a surprise that Walsh had already managed to push the young doctor's buttons. But Shane had that effect on people. You only really felt one of two ways about him and it tended to vary day-to-day.

"There's no explanation possible where he's concerned." Michonne deadpanned.

Clara cackled loudly enough for even the Brigadier General to take notice.

* _Having fun, ladies?_ * He asked them in French, raising his pilsner glass to them.

* _Oh yes, Matt. In fact, I was just telling Michonne that Rick —_ * Clara started before stopping abruptly.

Michonne kicked her friend so hard she dropped her drink, and they all watched as it shattered on the concrete of the outdoor patio in front of them. Clara and Matt both flinched in shock.

* _Careful.*_ Michonne admonished her friend smoothly as if nothing had happened under their table. She shook her head exasperatedly at Matt, as if in forbearance for her klutzy friend. * _Butter fingers_.*

He smiled sympathetically at Michonne; many an employee cut loose on the weekends. She imagined the general had learned to overlook it...within reason.

Clara looked at Michonne harshly but closed her mouth, finally getting the message.

"Clara and I were just saying what a natural Rick is at his job. I'm so glad he got that promotion." Michonne said covering quickly in English.

"Oh Richard wasn't promoted," Matt said frowning. "At least it wasn't a promotion he applied for."

Rick's change in job title predated both Michonne and Clara's transfers to the ESHQ. This was news to both of them. They both frowned at the Brigadier General in unison.

"Forgive me, I didn't mean to suggest he's not doing a good job. I just meant that we had to ask him to step into the position. We lost his predecessor, under unfortunate circumstances, and were lucky enough to convince Richard to step in as we've tried to find a replacement."

 _Michonne hadn't known that._ It was a surprise and yet not a surprise knowing Rick. He'd always struck her as the kind of guy for which leadership was a role thrust upon him, not one he actively pursued. She'd always admired that about him. So honestly, this news made sense.

"Unfortunately though, that's meant that Richard has had to greatly overstay his original appointment, for which we're grateful." Matt continued.

Michonne did know that. Six to nine months was the average posting length with a possible six-month extension like she was on now. She'd heard Rick was already on his sixteenth month!

"...It was only in the past two weeks that we've been able to convince him to change his status from 'interim' to permanent. We don't know what changed his mind. He was intent on going back to America until a month ago. But whatever it is. I must say I'm relieved that I can count on him to stay with us a bit longer until the unrest in the southeast settles a bit," Matt said with a frown.

"Anyway ladies, enough —what do you Americans call it, Michonne— 'shop talk'? It's Friday, I'm buying your next round to replace the one Dr. Lissouba sacrificed to the Gods of Gravity. Enjoy yourselves," he concluded raising his glass to them yet again.

Matt turned back to his companion after giving them both a quick nod and a wave to the bartender.

"Thank you, General," Michonne said turning toward Clara, still somewhat lost in thought about that new information.

"Interesting, huh?" Clara said, vocalizing Michonne's thoughts. She grinned as if she was quite pleased with herself. "I guess something, _besides your transfer from Kinshasa of course_ , must have happened in the last fortnight to have given him the incentive to stay on."

Michonne looked up at her friend and scowled.

She was fairly certain Clara was being ridiculous. Rick was happily married. Besides which, she'd known him a long time and was fairly positive that he felt nothing more for her than a brotherly affection. Other than the slightly awkward encounter they'd had a few months earlier in her kitchen, they'd enjoyed a wonderfully platonic relationship for years. This speculation about them, that she knew more than just Clara subscribed to, came totally out of the clear blue. Michonne would _never_ compromise their relationship and she knew Rick wouldn't either.

* * *

Still, like an idea that couldn't be contained or a song that rooted around in the mind, the thought kept popping up unbidden and incessant. Michonne couldn't manage, once they were out there in the ether, to unthink the thoughts or ignore the butterflies and small surge of delight they gave her. Even a week later, as she rushed down the sidewalk, determined to at least be under fifteen minutes late, they came back to her yet again, unsolicited.

 _He likes you, you know._

Michonne smiled to herself as she thought of Rick standing waiting, as he always did, near the flagpole in the atrium, just off to the side of the security desk. He waited there while her badge cleared security carrying a cup of punishingly strong, black, Kisangani coffee in his hands, still piping hot as if he timed her arrival every day to the second.

Michonne's mind was decidedly not where it should have been when she collided with a young woman right on the Mission steps. She came around the corner rushing to get inside as the young lady seemed to be rushing to get out. Though they were roughly the same size and height, Michonne could feel the woman's bones right through her clothes. She was far lighter than Michonne, perhaps undernourished, so she fell back onto the pavement roughly as if she'd just been thrown by a wrestler. Michonne was mortified.

" _Pardon!_ " Michonne started in French hoping the woman spoke more than just the local languages, Swahili and Lingala.

* _Are you okay?_ * Michonne implored. She couldn't help but notice how fine-boned and delicate the young woman felt as she helped her up around the shoulders and by the arm back to her feet.

The girl dusted herself off and gently pulled out of Michonne's grasp with surprising poise. Dressed in a long, multi-colored Kente patterned skirt and a t-shirt proclaiming the wrong team champions of Super Bowl Forty-Two, Michonne suspected she was from one of the outer districts.

* _Yes Ma'am_.* The young woman answered nervously, looking back at the guard at the door, who had watched the whole thing play out indifferently.

Dressed in his blue fatigues and requisite blue and white helmet with the accompanying AR-15, his face was an emotionless mask. Michonne knew what a formidable presence the guards at the entrance could pose. She knew they had the potential to frighten off many a weary visitor. At times, she wished they weren't necessary but experience showed how they were.

* _Can I help you? I work in here._ *

The young woman looked her over carefully before shaking her head and attempting to go. Michonne put a comforting hand on hers.

 _*It's my job to help people who come in. So, please, how can I help?_ *

* _I-I'm here to see Miss Greene? Maggie?_ * The girl relented, stammering.

" _Quelle chance!_ " Michonne declared brightly taking the hesitant young woman by the arm. * _I just happen to know Maggie! She's a very good friend of mine._ *

* _Truly?_ * The young woman said hopefully.

Michonne nodded taking her up the steps. Just as she suspected, the girl trembled at the imposing figure the soldier struck at the door.

"Kevin Kazumba." Michonne declared to the normally jovial young man, whose twenty-fourth birthday party she and Maggie had just attended over the weekend, but who currently stared at the girl with menace.

Startled, he turned his attention quickly to Michonne, wide-eyed like a pup that was just about to be reprimanded.

* _Get the door for us?_ * She said holding back an actual laugh at his rapid change in demeanor.

* _Y-yes, Ms. Philippe._ * He scrambled for the door pulling it open with a brief flourish.

* _Thank you, Kevin._ *

The young girl smiled, shocked at the change Michonne could inspire.

* _Let's find Maggie for you, okay?_ *

As she expected, Rick stood in the lobby waiting. He shook his head, holding up the wrist that held his watch and pointing at it with his cup hand for her to see. He frowned when he saw the girl accompanying her, walking up to the security desk to meet them there. Michonne gave her ID badge to the staff sergeant seated in front of her.

"And she is?" The Sergeant nodded toward Michonne's guest.

The young woman looked nervous again. She clearly understood what he asked, though it probably would have been hard to misunderstand his tone.

* _What's your name? My name is Michonne._ * Michonne said to the girl in the most soothing voice she could manage.

"Ariane, Ariane Kidiaba." She said hesitantly.

Michonne looked at the staff sergeant feeling for some reason vindicated.

* _State your business._ * He said harshly. At which point Rick stepped in, tapping him lightly on the shoulder. The officer turned, relinquishing responsibility to his superior with a shrug.

"What's up?" Rick asked, his face a large question mark as he reached across the desk to hand Michonne her cup of coffee.

"She's here to see Maggie. I don't think she has an appointment. I caught her before she could run away." Michonne whispered to him as she took the cup, opening the top to inhale the fragrant aroma.

He nodded, watching her appreciate her cup of coffee for a moment before speaking.

"Okay, say no more." He said easily like a man who makes all the decisions. "Let her through."

The staff sergeant nodded, giving her the go ahead to enter with Michonne. The other soldiers, who stood in the lobby and had been watching the conclusion of the conversation, turned their attention back to the entrance. The young girl looked at Michonne with obvious astonishment.

"Thanks," Michonne said to him, taking two sips of her coffee and then handing it back to him.

"I'll catch you later."

Rick nodded, as he sipped from the cup himself, standing by the desk and watching them go.

Michonne walked Ariane to the impressively sweeping grand staircase of the old Belgian colonial building. She could see the wonder in the young woman's eyes as she looked around taking in the large ornate building. Though it was well past its prime it still bore the hallmarks of its past glory.

When they found her, Maggie was watering the large, purple, flowering bougainvillea plant that grew out of its pot and through the window. Michonne was glad she was there instead of sitting officiously at her desk. It made her look less intimidating. Not that Maggie, with her big green eyes and beautiful toothy smile, was ever truly intimidating. Still, as Michonne had known the woman since she was in pigtails, she acknowledged that everyone might not feel as she did.

"Knock-knock." She said with her hands on Ariane's arms presenting her to Maggie but also holding her still. Michonne had found many of the women who came to Maggie, either wishing to report on abuses to themselves or others, tended to need girding.

As the current Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Internally-displaced Persons, Maggie Greene's job was a delicate balancing act. Her mandate was a mouthful. She was to both seek out and receive information on violent acts against women and those forced to flee their homes but who remained within their country's borders. An important distinction from the very technical Human Rights Council, for which Michonne worked, which monitored human rights violations of all kinds against "refugees". Maggie, in her position, tended to the people that sometimes fell through the cracks. And Michonne couldn't think of a better job for the tough but gentle young woman.

Unfortunately, Maggie's job constantly documenting and detailing the worst of human nature to report to the UN International body, took a toll. Michonne was continually impressed that Maggie had not yet allowed it to make her jaded. Despite having, at 26, already worked in some of the worst spots in the world for those types of things, she remained an optimist. As a UN worker and a member of the Peace Corps before that, Maggie had already been to both Colombia and the Sudan but was yet undaunted. Michonne was forever impressed. She was truly her father's daughter.

Maggie turned, already smiling at the sound of Michonne's voice. But the color rapidly drained from her face when she saw the girl standing at her side.

"Ane, what are you doing here?" Maggie said alarmed, rushing to the girl and pulled her into an embrace.

Michonne was startled when the girl fell into Maggie's arms and her composure fell to pieces.

"Something is happening," Ariane said through her tears. Maggie led her to a chair near her desk and fell into the seat beside her.

Michonne wasn't sure if she should stay or go, looking to Maggie for guidance. Maggie gave her a sober look and nodded for Michonne to take a seat. She perched on the edge of the desk behind Maggie obediently but otherwise remained silent.

Ariane whimpered as Maggie rubbed her arm. "Did you come all the way here by yourself?

The girl nodded.

"That's over a hundred miles, Ane! Alone? What were you thinking?" Maggie chastised her gently.

"I had to come!" She insisted. "He took more girls and boys from the village. He says no one will care, that no one will miss us. But you do right, Maggie?"

Michonne watched the two young women looking at each other as Ariane searched Maggie's face. It was amazing, there were at most a decade and thousands of miles between these two women in terms of experiences but in that moment it was as if they were sisters.

"Of course! You remember what I told you. This is his way of tricking you. You don't listen."

Ariane nodded but her hesitation was obvious. "My mother says, I'm to heed him."

Maggie opened her mouth to speak and then stopped. Michonne knew precisely why. In this culture where family and elders were everything, it was ill-advised to try and encourage a young person to rebel. They, as primarily observers, had to constantly walk on a slender thread between what they really thought and what they could say.

"...He treats me well." Ariane admitted as if agreeing with her mother.

"That's not true, Ane. Just because he is not forcing himself on you doesn't mean he's a good person!" Maggie insisted.

Michonne watched as Ariane looked back at her briefly in embarrassment. She made an effort to keep her face neutral but thinking Maggie needed to be a little more circumspect, remembering there was a third pair of ears in the room, not two. Taking that cue, however, Michonne slid off the edge of the desk and kneeled between the two women. Ariane watched in surprise as Michonne took the hand Maggie wasn't already holding.

"There is nothing you should be ashamed of," Michonne reassured her.

She'd seen it many times in many countries, young girls and women married off by their families to village elders or tribal leaders. She vehemently disagreed with the practice- generally seeing it as criminal, but she tried desperately not to pass judgment on the individual people. She would not condemn Ariane's mother without knowing why she'd done it.

"Do you want to stay here?" Michonne asked gently, knowing that being a runaway was virtually unheard of. "We can find someplace for you."

The young woman shook her head. "I can't leave my brother."

"Do you know where Fabian is?" Maggie asked then.

"No." Ariane wept. "He has sent him for training near _Lubero_."

She looked up at Maggie with eyes like platters. "He said either he will make Fabian a man or he will make me a woman."

Michonne felt the bile rising in her throat. Some of these so-called warlords were just scared little men turned by circumstance into bullies, but some were sadists given the opportunity to become psychopaths. She feared Ariane was under the thumb of the latter. _But if the girl wouldn't run, what could they do?_ They were officially empowered to do very little.

"DaDa says on our eighteenth birthday, he will get what he wants from one of us."

"Did you say 'DaDa'?" Michonne said sitting back on her heels, stunned. She looked at Maggie for confirmation that perhaps she had just been hearing things. But Maggie's bleak expression told otherwise.

"Ariane, give Maggie and I a second, okay?" Michonne said getting awkwardly to her feet while pulling Maggie roughly out of her chair. She dragged Maggie into the hallway and turned to face her.

"Did she just say _DaDa_? As in Peter Alexandre Ngangabouka?" Michonne closed the door to the office when she saw Ariane watching.

Maggie nodded reluctantly as Michonne used the Christian name of the worst and most notorious warlord in the country. A man whose violence and brutality inspired both fear and awe throughout the DRC.

"Please, _please_ don't tell me this girl is one of his wives?" Michonne gripped Maggie's arm tighter, as she nodded again. "Maggie Greene, what the hell are you thinking about?"

DaDa Ngangabouka or 'Pop Negan', as the American servicemen stationed at US Africa Command in Kisangani called him, was a notorious rebel leader who basically ruled the Eastern border of the country. During the genocide in neighboring Rwanda, DaDa had come to power providing the Rwandans fleeing their own country asylum and the Congolese that lived along the border safety. A used car salesman in his former life, he became a general in a time of turmoil and a folk hero to many. He and his band of followers, that he called _The Saviors_ protected many.

Once the Civil War was over, however, he refused to relinquish his power. Instead, going from village to village, town to town, conscripting men and boys into his own private army. One that now numbered in the hundreds on both sides of the border and even within adjacent Uganda. For the most part, the weakened governments of all three countries had no choice but to allow him free reign. Now, years later after his power base had solidified, other than keeping him from expanding into new territories, through small border skirmishes, the weakened governments ceded him a vast fiefdom over which he ruled.

UN officers, as Maggie well knew, were strongly cautioned against interacting with or venturing into his territory. But Michonne also knew, with the stories that came out of North Kivu and Goma, the bases of his operation, a principled woman like Maggie would be hard pressed to comply. Especially, if a young girl like Ariane had come to her for help, even Michonne felt her heart strings being tugged at.

"Just tell me, how'd you meet her? You weren't in Nord Kivu were you?" Michonne asked referring to the still war-torn, eastern district.

Maggie looked away guiltily.

"Do you know how dangerous that is?" Michonne wanted to shake this woman, who had always been like a little sister to her. "You didn't go alone?"

"Oh, course not! Shane took me."

Michonne rolled her eyes. Sometime she could strangle him. "I know Rick didn't know about this?"

"And he still won't," Maggie said sternly looking back at Michonne with a challenge in her eyes.

" _Fine_. I'm certainly not going to tell him." Michonne sighed and opened the office door to reenter.

Ariane looked at them both expectantly and Maggie gave her slight nod, to which she exhaled heavily. Michonne didn't appreciate the little side conversation that seemed to be happening in front of her that she couldn't decipher.

"Is there something going on?" She asked.

Ariane shook her head. Michonne turned to see Maggie looking just as innocent.

"Hey Hotstuff," a quick rap on the door preceded Shane's head popping into the doorframe. Maggie moved quickly to stand beside Michonne, effectively obscuring his view of the girl in the chair.

"I just wanted to know—" He started before he saw Michonne standing there. "Oh, hey 'Chonne."

She leaned against the chair and felt rather than saw how stiffly Ariane sat, with her back ramrod straight. Michonne could understand completely given the life she must lead how men of all kinds terrified the girl. From Kevin downstairs to Shane now they must have all seemed like a threat. It was an awful way to be forced to live, whether or not the rumors that DaDa didn't permit rape among his men were true.

"Frack." Michonne acknowledged him with a nod.

Shane cracked a smile not quite as irritated by the little nickname as Rick continually was.

"Mags, I just wanted to know if you were gonna be free tonight?" His eyes wandered around them both trying to get a look at the person behind them.

"Lemme get back to you," Maggie said walking to the door.

"That one of them?" He asked her in a not-quite whisper.

Michonne rolled her eyes as Maggie nodded. Except when it involved seduction, apparently, Shane had the skill and finesse of a donkey.

"You'll be around?" Maggie asked placing a kiss on his cheek. He smiled almost bashfully.

Michonne shook her head. For all that exasperated her about the man, she had to admit, Shane was in love with being in love. There was no other explanation for it. When he was in it, he really was quite smitten. And right now he was as taken with Maggie as she was with him. Unfortunately, Michonne had seen it before. Her friend Andrea barely spoke to her now for, as she called it, "siding with that turd."

"I'll call you later," Maggie whispered into the side of his face. He gave her another quick peck on the lips before departing. Maggie closed the door securely behind him and turned to face them.

"I have to get back!" The girl leaped from her seat and declared.

"What?" Michonne said shocked. She didn't know what they were going to do with her but she certainly had no intentions of delivering her back into the hands of that madman. "Absolutely not!"

Ariane looked desperately at Maggie.

"I told you, I must go! Maggie tell her. DaDa will kill my brother if I disobey!"

"Well, just where does he think you are now?" Michonne asked, not believing she was even considering it.

"With my mother. She is sick. He let me go to my village to look after her for a few days. If I do not return, he'll know I lied. He might think she helped me. I must go back!"

Maggie looked at Michonne beseechingly.

"Well, we can't let her go back alone."

"I'll take her," Maggie said immediately.

"Are you crazy? No."

"I'll ask Shane to take us."

"No!" Ariane was surprisingly adamant. "No. I mean I cannot be seen with a white man." She amended her objection.

Michonne thought for a minute. That left out Rick too. Not that she'd share this crazy, cockamamie plan with him anyway. "How about Kevin? You met him today. Is he okay?"

The girl blushed to Michonne's surprise, then nodded.

"Okay. Kevin is on duty until 1 o'clock. I'll see if he's willing to accompany us afterward."

Maggie hugged the girl to her.

"It's gonna be okay. See? We'll get you home and no one will ever know."

Ariane exhaled heavily with relief but Michonne couldn't shake the feeling of intense foreboding she got.


	10. Chapter 10

***Author's Note***

 _Hey Everyone! Thank you again for reading and commenting! So I debated for a minute writing this but I wanted to attend to two things that I thought maybe I should address: Okay so first thing, I wanted to apologize to folks for neglecting to issue a trigger warning. I initially didn't because I thought "Hey, it's Walking Dead/World War Z fic, readers should know what to expect. These are literal worlds of unpleasantness of various kinds". But I realize now that's irresponsible of me. While my story exists in an entirely imaginary universe, my subject matter (particularly in upcoming chapters) has real world analogs that I'm borrowing from (meaning no disrespect whatsoever to the real people who have had to endure it). That requires a warning. So here it is. I must advise readers that though it is not my intent to upset anyone (beyond the bounds of storytelling), the subject matter, language and scenarios moving forward may be upsetting to some. This will most likely be the only warning I issue. My apologies in advance to anyone who finds elements of this story distressing._

 _On to the second matter, there are no words for the love you guys have shown me and my little story. Thank you! That being said, I know and understand it won't be all kudos all the time. I respect that and I will endeavor to take any criticism y'all give constructively. And as I hope most of you have already noticed, I will try to respond (at some point by DM) to any questions or comments you have. Still, some responses will have to be public to attend to more universal concerns. This is one. What I'm hearing from most of you is that you guys dig the flashbacks. But as I learned in school long ago, if one person bothers to write it, a few people are actually thinking it. So to the people who are not feeling the flashbacks, I've got just three words for you: "Past is prologue". Hope that helps. Anyway as Wendy Williams might say, I love you for reading!_

7/26/15 04:38 EST

 _USS Ticonderoga_ (200 miles off Charleston, SC)

Michonne opened her eyes directly into the placid gaze of Rick's daughter, Judith.

The baby was awake but completely content to lie quietly in her sleeping father's arms. She watched Michonne and played with her feet in the berth directly across from her in their very narrow sleeping quarters. Lack of space had required that everyone double up. As it was, Beth slept facing the wall at Michonne's side, in a bunk ordinarily made for just one crewman. They shared the entire six-bunk cabin with another family and a sad little midshipman who found his quarters completely overtaken.

Michonne looked again at the adorable little girl, who up until yesterday had been completely theoretical. She knew she existed, of course, Lori had taken care of that. Still, she existed in the same realm as people who lived on the opposite side of the world: very real but vaguely of the imagination. Until yesterday, Carl who shared a bottom bunk with the other family's little boy, also remained fixed in her imagination. He was forever the seven-year-old Michonne had long ago chased around Hershel's lawn with dueling super soakers. It was strange to her how just yesterday these kids were virtual strangers to her and yet now she wanted desperately, with every ounce of her being, to assure they grew safely to adulthood.

Lori had not, _decidedly not_ , left her children in Michonne's care. Given the last time she'd heard from the woman, Michonne still felt very comfortable in assuming that. Nevertheless, she found that she still felt charged with helping their father look after them. Honestly, Michonne found she felt the same way about Beth despite the fact that the girl was eighteen and Hershel was alive somewhere in the Greater New York Metropolitan Area. It was daunting, having gone to bed just 30 or so hours ago single and relatively carefree, to have subsequently lived through day and night where she'd practically inherited three children. It made her fearful of the trip she was embarking on while simultaneously feeling more committed to their goal than ever. They had to find _something_ out there, a clue, an answer, a cure. Michonne was lost in her thoughts. So much so that it startled her to look up and see Rick looking directly at her.

"Been awake long?" he whispered.

He didn't have to speak loudly, they could scarcely have been closer if they'd actually been in bed together. It was seriously awkward for her. Michonne felt a pang of sympathy for the sailors who had to face this day in and day out for months at sea.

So she just shrugged, she had no idea.

It felt like she'd never gone to sleep at all, like she'd never stopped thinking and worrying. She felt like she had only just closed her eyes a moment before, but a look at her watch told her that had actually been four hours ago. At six-thirty a helicopter was coming to take them on to the aircraft carrier, the _USS Andrew Jackson_ , to catch a transport plane to parts unknown. Although the truth was, she knew exactly where she was going- with Dr. Mamet to the DMZ to find the first in what she hoped would be a trail of breadcrumbs they could decipher. That was if they weren't somehow killed first. Which was where Rick came in; him and a group that he had spent the evening hand-picking. It was all enough worry to ensure that she never slept a wink again.

"We have one mid-air refuel over Turkey, that hopefully goes off," He said getting right into it. "We've been in touch with Incirlik Air Base. There's a group holding out over there. From what I was told, it's a shitshow but they still think—"

"L-let's talk somewhere else," Michonne whispered cutting him off when she saw Carl's eyes open in the bunk below his father and she felt Beth stirring in the small space behind her.

He nodded seeming to understand. He slipped out of his berth as Michonne did as well and carried Judith out of the room with him. Michonne supposed since Judith was an infant, it really wouldn't matter to her if they were talking about the apocalypse as long as they did it in soothing tones.

She followed Rick out of the cabin into the equally narrow hall, only to find that it being four in the morning had no bearing on the level of activity in the ship's corridors. Michonne didn't get claustrophobic but if she did, this would have been a bad spot for her to take refuge. Rick ducked into a stairwell with her right behind him. He propped his foot up on one step and turned to face her, balancing Judith seated on his thigh.

"Claremont assured me that Mamet knows what he's looking for," He said bouncing the little girl lightly as he spoke.

"I think it's more a case of Milton wanting people to _think_ he knows what he's looking for," Michonne admitted, smiling as Judith attempted to stuff her entire fist into her mouth.

Embarking on this type of trip, Michonne had learned the hard way, everybody's cards had to be on the table. While eloquent speeches and grand pronouncements were great for rallying the troops, honesty was best in working with a team. If Rick's people were to be her squad, she was going to have to be 100 percent honest with them at all times.

"So you're saying we're going on a wild goose chase? I need to know this, because five people were just voluntold to risk their lives coming with us."

"No, it's not that he's clueless, it's that we're looking for a needle in a haystack filled with hay...and needles," Michonne said glumly, trying to simply explain what had already been complicatedly explained to her.

 _But it was doable._

Michonne knew she needed to believe that to function. She had never done anything like this before but she had helped UN medical personnel maneuver in war zones where their lives and her's had been at risk. She had worked in endangered communities looking for causes and vectors of disease and chronic illness with the CDC. Rick had guarded heads of state and kept hundreds of people safe in his years both at the UN and as a Marine. Dr. Mamet was a Harvard-trained epidemiologist who had worked at both the NIH and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. He was actually one of the bright lights of his field.

They were all well-qualified for the enormous responsibility they'd been given, Hershel reminded her in the pep talk he'd given that evening. _Or at the very least_ , she figured, _they were definitely better than nothing_ , which was what they'd had before she and Rick arrived. She just had to believe she deserved the faith placed in her. They were going to accomplish their task and make it back safely. They had to.

"I believe he'll know what he's looking for when he finds it," She said with a confidence she had yet to feel.

Rick nodded his head looking down at Judith, who giggled as she bounced.

Michonne took a deep breath.

"Rick, I'm thinking, maybe you shouldn't come."

He looked up at her suddenly, his azure eyes wide as if she'd startled him.

"Is this still about the DRC? We haven't talked about that. About never wanting to see me again?"

Michonne winced, sighing with regret. The less said about that whole time, the better. It remained an unresolved source of pain for her. She had always hated that those words of rebuke were some of the last things she'd said to him. She had just been so numb at the time, so disconnected from her feelings about anything, but primarily about Rick. She had worried for a long time after that she'd never have the opportunity to take it back or apologize and now he was there. Still, it was not a place she wanted to revisit right then.

"No, no," She responded quickly, shaking her head. "I didn't even mean that then."

He didn't respond immediately, as if he didn't believe her. His eyes just scanned her face as if looking for the truth there.

"But you've got Carl and Judith here." She tried to find a way to say it right. "Look, you put together a crack team for me, I have no doubt. You don't have to be one of them going out there."

His expression softened somewhat and he looked briefly at Judith again.

"For these kids, there's no one, if not you." Michonne appealed to his guilt deliberately.

She was fairly sure like any true workaholic, Rick felt a certain amount of guilt about being frequently separated from his kids. She was tapping into it, hoping it might save Rick from himself. Michonne knew he would come with her, without question. Putting himself in danger for her and others had been part of his job description for many years. But that was when he was secure in the knowledge that Lori was there, taking up the slack. With Lori suddenly gone, Michonne didn't want Rick blindly following her off a cliff just because he always had before.

He seemed to read that all in her face, the way he used to. He cracked the smallest of smiles and shook his head amused. He took his foot off the step, straightened to his full height and put Judith on his hip, so he could close the small distance between them. Michonne straightened reflexively too as he approached.

"Carl and Judith are now surrounded by the finest fighting force in the world. A complement of thousands of military men and women that are also protecting the Secretary of State, who might just be the president by this time tomorrow," He revealed grimly.

"I've been assured that they're not docking in any port again, so the fleet is surrounded by ocean. And if Mamet is right, no one turns slowly enough to go undetected, which means they won't be accidentally airlifting infected onto the ships." He adjusted Judith on his hip, coming closer.

"Now, is that enough, ideally? No, but I've been told in the morning they're planning to transfer all the families with children on board to the _Jackson_ because that's the epicenter and the most protected part of the Carrier Group."

He spoke in low tones mere inches from the side of her face as if he were intimating a secret, though they had the entire stairwell to themselves.

"So I choose to have faith that I couldn't protect them any better. What I don't have faith in is that anyone in the group I put together can protect _you_ better than me."

Rick looked deeply into Michonne's eyes. She'd seen the look before. All those years ago in her tiny kitchen in Kinshasa. She felt as immobilized by its intensity now as she did then. He leaned forward, his lips gently closing over hers in the lightest and briefest of kisses. Michonne was stunned. Not that he'd done it, but that he'd _finally_ done it now, of all times. Rick tried to back away but Judith had by then gotten a grip of the Navy tee Michonne was wearing as a sleep-shirt. She attempted to use it to scale Michonne's body.

They both looked down at her and chuckled as Rick struggled to disengage his daughter's death-grip on Michonne's clothes.

"It's okay. Give her to me," Michonne said with a smile that Rick returned as he did what she suggested.

"Well, I guess that means I can't convince you to stay," Michonne cleared her throat, continuing as if nothing had transpired between them, "In which case, Deanna has a son who's a tenth-grade history teacher. In the next couple of days, he's going to start teaching the kids. I think Carl should participate."

Rick nodded, searching her face with his eyes. There was too much happening now for Michonne to deal with anything more. If he was expecting a response or better yet, a swoon, he'd picked the wrong moment. Michonne just went down the bullet-points in her mind.

"Also, I know I probably should have cleared this with you first but everything's been so hectic. Time is flying and I wanted this squared away..." She paused not wanting this to sound as funereal as she knew it did. "in case, you were as stubborn as I thought you would be."

She chuckled awkwardly, feeling inexplicably both nervous and irritated.

"I know you don't know him but I've asked Daniel to just look out for Beth and the kids while you're gone. And he's agreed. I know I don't actually know him that well either but I trust him. I mean, I trust him with my life, in fact."

Rick still didn't speak for a second longer digesting that information. "Well, you're right, I don't know him. So I'll need to speak with him but your endorsement carries a lot of weight."

Michonne played with Judith's little hand, still clutching at her shirt and watched Rick watch them together. The baby had clearly taken to her and Michonne had to admit she was pretty taken with Judith too. She'd always imagined she'd have babies eventually but work and life happened in a way that brought her into her late thirties still childless. Michonne had viewed her ultimately abortive engagement to Michael as a last chance of sorts. Now that the world was on the brink, she realized it definitely might have been.

She suddenly decided to just enjoy Judith and her accompanying wonderful baby smell for another moment more. Then Michonne sighed, fighting a sudden melancholy as she handed the girl back to her father.

 _There was no point in dwelling on it._ She realized as she watched Judith settle back into Rick's arms.

Sensing her change in mood, Rick spoke up again, his eyes trained on her face. "You okay?

"Yeah, yeah, it's just that today's going to be a very long day." She sighed again heavily, uttering what she was sure had to be the understatement of the century. "Might as well get started."

06:19 EST

Michonne swung the large brown canvas satchel over her shoulder and bent at the knees in front of Carl. The helicopter's spinning rotor blades kicked up enough wind and noise to make what she planned to say difficult to decipher without him closer. She tugged him to her by the sleeve of his windbreaker. He was surprised by that, looking at her askance. She could definitely understand his reticence. It was a rare child who could have heard any part of Rick and Michonne's mission and not been in a funk at the prospect. _Maybe Judith,_ Michonne posited humorously _, but only because she was too young to talk._

Though they'd spent less than twelve hours together, Michonne felt as if she needed to talk to him before she left. It felt silly, but she had an idea that she'd worked the night before to put into place and hoped now he was game for. The little boy she'd played with at the barbecue all those years ago would have been. But given everything that had happened to him in the last day, Michonne would understand if that boy was gone permanently. Carl looked over at his father, further away on the helipad, still in a huddle with Beth and Daniel, before reluctantly stepping forward.

"Here." She handed him the items she'd just fished out of her satchel.

He looked at them skeptically then back at her before a small grin threatened to crack the somber veneer of his face.

"Silver Surfer?" Carl looked at the comic books she'd handed him and then back at her incredulously. "These are _yours_?"

"Nope." She smiled conspiratorially. "They belong to an Ensign Welliver. He's in berthing 405 over on the _Jackson_. And from what I understand, he's got plenty more of these, which he's willing to share with you. If you can keep a secret."

"A secret, why?" Carl asked trying to mask his eagerness. He'd been in a sulk since his father woke him that morning and he was clearly reluctant to let it go.

Michonne played along, pretending not to notice how pleased he already was.

"Well, imagine you're him and you've got this precious stash. Now imagine having to share it with all 50 of the other kids on board?" Michonne asked watching him flip through the pages casually. She handed him a spare flashlight from her satchel too. "Can you promise to only read these in your bunk at night and take good care of them and any more you get from Ensign Welliver?"

Carl nodded, an actual smile coming to his face.

"Good, 'cuz I already promised him you would." Michonne smiled back, standing up finally. "So do you know the Silver Surfer?"

Carl looked up at her curiously. "Of course. He's not my favorite. I like Warpath and Cable, but he's cool."

"Ahh, _The New Mutants_ , deep cuts. I like your style, kid." Michonne knew instantly she had him. New Mutants were a little too obscure for a casual comic book reader. From his wide-eyed expression, she could tell she'd impressed him. Rocking back on her heels, she grinned like a Cheshire Cat. "Still, I'm glad you think he's cool. See, 'cuz The Surfer is my personal favorite."

"Why?"

"'Cuz, he gets to explore the galaxy. Meet different species."

"Yeah, to help his boss decide which planets he's gonna eat." Carl fixed her with that quizzical gaze again as if he were trying to make sense of her. It was funny, she'd seen Rick look at her in an identical fashion before.

Michonne nodded. "Yeah maybe, but what I've always loved was he gets to be the first point of contact with different worlds. He's a herald, an intermediary between peoples, an ambassador. True, for a world-eater but hey. Nobody's perfect." She shrugged and Carl gave her the first laugh she thought she'd seen from him.

"Alright now, you know nothing in the world is free," Michonne said abruptly seeing his father headed back toward them.

 _It was time to go_.

"I have to _pay_ for these? I thought you said I was only borrowing them?" Carl questioned.

"Oh yeah, you are borrowing them from Ensign Welliver, but as the facilitator of this exchange, _I_ require something of you."

Carl eyed her suspiciously yet again. Michonne loved how obviously he tried to make heads or tails of her. As an adult who clearly liked comics as much as he did, she was defying categorization, and she could read the struggle clearly on his face. He was definitely his father's son.

"What?" He asked slowly.

"Galactus has had fourteen heralds. By the time we get back, I want you to be able to name them all and tell me which one is your favorite, which was his best and why."

Rick, Beth and Daniel walked up to them just as the cynicism left Carl's face for the final time. Michonne had him. She knew it and he knew it too.

"How am I supposed to find all that out?" He complained.

"The internet still works. And you've got Ensign Welliver's comics. In fact, I bet there are probably a few other people on board who could contribute opinions to that debate too. That sounds like at least three good sources for a paper."

"A paper!" Carl's voice threatened to become a whine.

Michonne looked up at Rick, now standing directly behind his son, and winked so quickly most would have missed it. "Yup. Five pages, double-spaced, one-inch margins. Or do you want me to tell the Ensign to forget it?"

Rick smiled, placing a hand on Carl's shoulder, squeezing it.

"Fine." Carl sulked, but Michonne could tell from his expression the idea intrigued him.

"I'm expecting that paper in my hands when we get back now." Implicit in her instructions was also the promise that she'd return his father safely to him. Carl seemed to get it. He just looked at her for a moment before nodding.

"Okay," she said shaking his hand to seal the deal before turning him over to his dad for their good-byes.

Michonne turned toward Beth then, who stood by stoically. Whatever Rick had said to her, she was trying to keep up a straight face.

"I'll keep in contact if I can." Michonne hugged the girl to her, giving her long blonde ponytail a tug like she'd done when Beth was a child. "Don't worry. We'll be back."

Michonne tried not to be affected when Beth's bottom lip began to quiver. "I know. Rick told us."

"You'll be okay while we're gone. Your dad is still just a phone call away and Mr. Salazar can help you with anything you need."

Beth nodded.

"If anything happens. You grab the kids and go with him okay?" Michonne looked to Daniel and he affirmed that wordlessly.

Beth nodded again, unable to speak. She hugged Michonne tighter.

Michonne released Beth and turned to Daniel then. He stood by patiently. Having been charged by her and Rick with the safety of the kids, his face was the appropriately stoic mask of a sentinel. Ironically, in that way, it wasn't all that much different than it had been since she met him. More and more, Michonne became convinced Daniel's previous life had clearly amounted to far more than just being the facilities manager of a skyscraper.

"Thank you for this." She outstretched a hand for him to shake and he took it warmly in both of his. Michonne couldn't hide her surprise at the gesture.

"Because of you, I am alive," He started, looking deeply into her eyes. "Because of you, I got an audience with the Secretary of State yesterday. And because of what you and Capt. Grimes are doing here, my daughter, Ofelia will be able to board the _USS Jimmy Carter_ in San Diego, if God willing, she and her mother can get to Camp Pendleton in time. All she has to do is get there."

"Daniel," Michonne started shocked. She had not orchestrated any of this. She was hardly comfortable with taking the credit.

He cut her off shaking his head.

"No. I believe you get an opportunity, a window and you either take it or don't. Ultimately, your fate is yours to decide. But you gave me those opportunities, you gave me a way to save my own life...and now possibly those of my daughter and ex-wife. For that, I will forever be in your debt. And I will protect these children as if they were my own flesh and blood."

He pat her hand appreciatively. Michonne could hear the sincerity in his voice and see in his face how seriously he took the charge they'd given him. She felt like her faith in him was being rewarded. She gave him a quick peck on the cheek and a smile, which surprised them both before stepping up into the waiting chopper.


	11. Chapter 11

February 2011

Bahanga Village, DRC (173 km east of Kisangani)

As they stopped the jeep on the outskirts of Ariane's village, Michonne could already sense something was off. She wasn't alone. Kevin, who had agreed under duress to ride in the passenger seat for the last portion of this trip, sat up straight beside her.

*Do you smell it?* He asked Michonne in French. He said something additional in Lingala that made Ariane, sit up as well.

In the five hour drive together, if Michonne wasn't mistaken, she had witnessed something blossom between the boy and girl. And though normally it would have been merely the age difference that gave her slight pause, the reality of Ariane's circumstances made her view the development with some concern.

*Smell what?* She said harshly, before taking the time to really pay attention.

He was right. Mingled amongst the loamy and vegetal scents that hung in the air of their lush jungle surroundings, there was the fresh smoky crispness of fire. Even more than fire though, it smelled like roasting flesh. As dusk was descending all around them, Michonne looked off into the distance and above the thatched rooftops at the far end of the village she could just make out the faint illumination of fire and the dark plumes of smoke.

 _Oh God._

Ariane screamed, the sound ear-piercing in their small SUV. She clawed at the door handle until she got it open and was out before Maggie could grab for her.

"Ariane!" Maggie shouted at the girl scrambling after her.

Kevin made for his door as well, calling out her name before Michonne caught him by the arm.

*No, Kevin.* Michonne said pulling the key out of the ignition and forcing it into his palm. *You wait here.*

*Ms. Philippe. I'm supposed to be protecting you. Protecting her!* He exclaimed anxiously.

Michonne got out of the car and walked to the back popping the rear liftgate and digging through the contents hidden where she'd placed them under the mat in the spare wheel well. She looked up then and saw Kevin still obediently sitting in the front seat watching her. She could see plainly how difficult it was for him to listen to her then. To not break free of the car and run after that girl as Maggie had.

*Kevin, you will help us, help Ariane, best by staying with this car.* She instructed him impatiently, pulling her small duffle bag from the trunk and swinging it over her shoulder.

Michonne knew she needed to catch up with them. She could already barely see Ariane as she tore down the main road of her small village. Maggie had stopped, putting her head between her knees to catch her breath briefly before taking off down the road again. Still Michonne knew she couldn't leave here before she extracted a promise from him.

*Kevin, promise me you will not get out of this car. If you see anyone but us coming, you drive back to the main road and wait for us there.*

*But—*

*No but, Kevin! _You stay here._ Keep the lights out. If you think you see anyone. You drive back to the road. Keep your cell on. And if Captain Grimes calls you...for God's sake, don't answer okay?* Michonne tied her locs up in a lopsided bun on the top of her head.

The young man agreed reluctantly, finally.

*Thank you, Kevin.* Michonne felt guilty as she watched him watch her close the rear door and run down the road.

The village was as she'd imagined it would be. Tucked in a verdant valley, Bahanga was only two thatch-roofed houses deep on either side of a small, main dirt road. Each house stood apart from the others with galvanized steel walls and neat little well-tended gardens surrounding them. They were beautiful in their utilitarian simplicity. The people who lived here were clearly proud, meticulous and industrious. Unlike what she imagined: however, the people were also cautious. The few she could see hung inside their homes only peering out briefly as she ran by.

The barbeque smell grew nauseatingly stronger as she got closer, precluding the possibility that she had been wrong in her imaginings. The wails that grew louder also confirmed what she thought. As the darkness fell, the red-orange glow of the flames that licked the sides of one house in particular lit the sky. Michonne's run slowed to a jog as she got closer and realized there would be no one to save.

Ariane lay in Maggie's arms in the dirt of what was once probably her mother's garden. Now it was littered with clothing and burned furniture. Ash blown on a gentle breeze from the blaze landed all around them like light snow flurries. Michonne had seen too many scenes too close to this one in her career to be surprised now. She just sighed.

Maggie rocked the girl whispering into her hair as she whimpered. Two small older women sat in homemade chairs, a few feet away from where Michonne stood, near their own home. It seemed they had seen quite a bit of this too, judging from their impassive expressions.

*Good evening, Mothers.* Michonne said to them in very poor Swahili.

They both looked up at her and nodded, still fanning themselves with small pieces of cardboard.

*What happened?*

They clucked between themselves in Lingala, too swiftly for Michonne to even try and make out any of what was said, before one spoke finally.

*DaDa's men came for his wife and the girl was not here.* The woman on the left answered succinctly in French.

*So they burn down her house?*

*The girl apparently said she would be here. When Miriam could not explain where she went to they slowly pulled all of her things out of the house and burned them one-by-one. But still she would not say.* The woman elaborated. *So then they said, in that case, if the girl was not back by five o'clock today, they would burn Miriam as well.*

Michonne looked down at her watch, it was 6:45.

She wasn't sure how it happened but a moment later she found herself kneeling in the dirt as well.

*Are you alright, my child? Would you like some water?* The woman asked her then.

Michonne nodded, not knowing where all the tears in her eyes were suddenly coming from. She put her head in her hands briefly and when she looked up the old woman was there with an old orange Ovaltine can filled with cool water.

*Thank you, Mother.* Michonne said respectfully. *May my friends have some too?*

The two women retrieved their water cans and took them over to Maggie, still cradling a weeping Ariane in the dirt.

*Daughter, they have not gone far. They will be back.* They warned Ariane after handing them the water.

Maggie and Michonne looked at each other for the first time then. A sense of urgency clearly exchanged in their eyes.

"C'mon, Ane. We have to go now," Maggie said trying to rouse the stupefied girl. She took her by the shoulder and lifted her until they were eye-to-eye.

Michonne got up off the ground and returned the cans to the older women.

"Hurry," the one who had hardly spoken at all said quietly in perfect English to Michonne when she got close enough to hear, "The one DaDa sent for her is the worst one."

Michonne rushed over to Maggie and helped her to her feet as she tried to pull Ariane to her feet as well. "We have to go. _Now_."

Michonne helped them down the dirt and gravel road with Maggie dragging the nearly catatonic girl along.

The same eyes in windows and doorways that had watched them run into town now watched them run out of it. No one spoke a word to them. The only sounds that resounded were the crickets and night creatures and the distant crackling sound of Ariane's house finally collapsing in on itself among the roar of the fire.

Kevin and the car were not where she'd left them when they finally got back to the clearing where he parked. They had to break out their flashlights to navigate the terrain back to the main semi-paved road. Despite having told him to do exactly this, Michonne found herself unreasonably angry with Kevin and ready to read him the riot act by the time they spotted the car. Only he wasn't alone when they came closer.

Three jeeps were parked around it, like a horseshoe, all turned inward with their high beams on, illuminating Kevin. He was in the center, on his knees beside a man standing over him. The other men sat in the cars or on the hoods patiently waiting.

Michonne grabbed Maggie by the shoulder and pulled her back. Ariane whimpered but otherwise did nothing. She was like a ragdoll in Maggie's arms. Michonne gestured silently for them to double back.

A gunshot rang out that echoed seemingly for miles. Michonne was certain the old sisters in the village half a mile away must have heard it. They froze where they stood.

*No, don't leave yet. I want to say hello to Ariane's new friends.* A booming voice said in French.

Michonne's blood ran cold.

*Come back, come back.*

*Go.* Voices announced suddenly from behind them. Michonne turned her head to see two small figures with guns.

The soldiers, if that was what they were, Michonne could barely see in the dim light, herded them back toward the cars.

*Yes, come. Join us.* The main voice said warmly.

"Ouch!" Maggie exclaimed and a moment later Michonne knew why, when she felt the unpleasant sensation of the barrel of a gun press into her spine, pushing her along harshly.

When they reached the cars, they were pushed into the center of the circle beside Kevin. Up close she could see he'd been beaten bloody. She attempted to kneel to help him when a voice cautioned her. It hadn't been the man standing next to him that was speaking after all.

*Ah, ah, ah, leave him there.* A man seated on the hood of their SUV instructed.

She stood facing him defiantly.

*So, how do you know Ariane?*

After a moment in which no one spoke, the questioner hopped off the hood easily and walked up to Maggie wrenching Ariane away. Both women screamed pitifully.

*I hate asking twice.* He slapped Ariane hard in the face, knocking her into the dirt.

*Please.* Maggie implored him. *We're just her friends.*

*She doesn't _have_ any friends.* He replied simply.

Michonne looked around the group. In the light cast by the bright headlights she could make out faces. None were any older than Kevin. She imagined few were even eighteen yet. _Child soldiers._ Reportedly they were more barbaric and cruel than adult soldiers because they tended to lack the awareness, empathy and remorse of adults. These were Ngangabouka's not-so-secret weapons.

*WHO ARE THEY, ARIANE?* He yelled in her face impatiently after a few more minutes in which she just whimpered.

*I –* Maggie started and he punched her in the stomach. She doubled over the wind knocked out of her, dropping to her knees.

*I wasn't talking to you.* He bent and spoke into Maggie's ear as she gasped for air.

Ariane seemed to emerge from her stupor. *They're –*

*We're doctors.* Michonne said finishing the girl's sentence.

The man spun on Michonne raising his hand to strike her as well. She didn't flinch from the blow.

"Hit me or them again and I promise you, you'll lose that hand if it's the last thing I do." Michonne said in English.

He laughed heartily at her then but Michonne saw the flash of fear in his eyes. He knew, if only in his heart of hearts, that she was deadly serious.

*American? I love Americans! I got my cool new glasses from an American.*

Michonne stood stone-faced but did notice as he pointed, the odd looking glasses perched on the top of his head. _Night-vision goggles._ Looking around the group, she noticed most of the others had them as well.

"I am liking you now," He replied in broken English. "I am Dwight."

He put a hand out for her to shake. She just looked at it.

*I'm Pritchard, Ashley Pritchard.* Michonne said with a perfectly straight face. Ignoring the brief glances that all three of her companions gave her. *I'm a doctor with the Red Cross.*

*Really?* Dwight said intrigued but skeptical.

Everything about him disgusted her, as he stood close enough for her to feel his hot breath on her face. With his small eyes, large pointed nose and long angular features, he reminded Michonne of nothing so much as a cartoon rat. If his nose could actually twitch, the image would have been complete. She nearly laughed at the thought.

"What is funny, Ashley Pritchard?" He said unsure if he was being made a fool of but he smiled as well.

*I'm just wondering what DaDa will say when he learns that you burned one of his mother-in-laws to death, while his wife was away getting her medicine?*

The smile fell away abruptly and he faltered.

*She was running away.*

*No!* Ariane screamed from her place on the ground where she still cried.

*No.* Michonne said defiantly. A smug smile that unnerved him coming to her face.

She watched him ball up his fist but he didn't dare strike her.

*Prove it.* He demanded.

 _She had him._

Acquiescing with a slight nod of the head, she pulled the bag she had over her shoulder around to her front and unzipped it. Pulling it open, she first grabbed the ID on a lanyard that sat on top, out of the bag. She slipped that over her head. He took the card in his hand and inspected it. Nearly six years later and Michonne found that Dr. Ashley Pritchard and the Red Cross badge he'd accidentally left at her apartment in Geneva after they broke up, still got her out of scrapes. It had been Ashley himself that had given her the idea to keep the badge. Contacting her from back home in England, he had suggested that she keep it and a bag filled with medical supplies handy if she ever needed a cover. Every time she thought of the simple genius of it, she wondered why she hadn't married that guy. It was all highly illegal, and possibly immoral but brilliant.

*How do I know this is you?* He said looking at the deliberately distressed photo that was so worn now, that one couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, white or black.

*How do you know it isn't?* She countered.

Dwight rifled through the bag roughly looking at the things inside. He surreptitiously relieved her of the small bottles of Vicodin, Percocet and codeine he found in there. _They always did._ That's why this was always so easy. It was why she always kept those bottles at the top of the bag as an inducement. He examined the antibiotics shaking the bottle and listening to the pills rattle inside.

*That was the one we were planning to give to Mrs. Kidiaba.* Michonne said lading her voice with as much accusation as she could muster.

He glowered at her but said nothing, continuing to root around in her duffle bag for things. He pulled items out tossing some to the ground and some to his men as well. This was to be expected, Michonne hardly batted an eye, although occasionally she feigned objection to sell it.

*That one is good for STDs* She said in a low tone just for his ears when he pulled out the bottle of Ciprofloxacin.

He looked at her harshly but stashed it in his jacket anyway.

 _They were all exactly the same._ That revelation never failed to shock her.

*Don't take it with any dairy products and be careful, it can make you constipated.* She smiled wickedly.

She could tell he wanted to hit her again, but they were past all that. He'd never dare now.

*May we please be allowed to go now?* Michonne said it loudly with the appropriate amount of deference.

It was all about not losing face and usually they'd kill to protect that. Dwight was obviously that kind of guy. The last thing Michonne wanted to do was push him further in that direction.

Dwight zipped up her bag roughly, making sure it jostled her as much as possible before pushing her back. She stumbled, almost falling down. That pleased him. He stepped away from her then.

*Bring her.* He told the man holding Ariane. *It's time to go home.*

Ariane started to cry as they dragged her to her feet. Maggie rose as well, finally getting her voice back. They pulled her away.

"What? No!" She screamed.

*Why are you taking her?* Michonne demanded.

*She wasn't running. That's what you said, right? And her mother doesn't need the medicine anymore.* He chuckled as Ariane moaned, fighting off the boy holding her. *So why would we leave her? DaDa wants his wife. He _misses_ her.*

The thought of it made Michonne ill. She watched as Maggie and Ariane fought with the people holding them.

*Stop it.* Dwight said to Ariane, pulling out his handgun. He pointed it in Maggie's face. *I can't shoot you, Little Bird. And I won't shoot the doctor. But I can certainly pop one of these two.*

He waved his gun back and forth between Kevin and Maggie as if trying to pick one, while his men held them still.

*No. I will come.* Ariane relented.

*I know you will.* He said with a grin for Michonne. *Put her in the car.*

The large boy holding Maggie threw her to the ground as the other kicked Kevin in the back of the legs driving him to his knees again.

*Let's go.* Dwight called out to his men. They all got into their cars as Maggie and Ariane screamed, begging not to be separated.

"You'll be okay, Ane. I promise you'll be fine!" Maggie reassured her tearfully as they pushed her into a car. Slowly, the other two cars pulled off and they stood in their headlights and Dwight's, with Ariane crying in the back seat.

"Bye-bye." Dwight hung out the passenger side window, swinging his gun and calling out to Michonne.

"It was good to met you, Doctor Pritchard." He tried out his English again.

Suddenly, he brought his hand up and shot Kevin, who collapsed into Maggie's arms.

"Oh my god Kevin!" She screamed as he fell heavily on to her.

Michonne rushed to their sides, pulling the bag from around her head and throwing it on the ground to dig through it for the large laparotomy pads that could soak up the blood that was seeping from his chest. Kevin's eyes rolled up into his head as he passed out. Maggie eased him as best she could to the ground with Michonne's help.

*Oh, he'll be alright.* Dwight said as he pulled up alongside them for a brief moment. *He's in good hands.*

Ariane screamed from the back seat, beating her small hands against the windows.

*You are a doctor, right?* He laughed as the car sped off into the night, kicking dirt and gravel back into their faces.


	12. Chapter 12

7/27/15 00:48 EET

 _Missed Approach - 8,200 ft. above sea level (20 miles outside of Adana, Turkey)_

"UAB Approach, this is USN 502 with you at 8200."

Rick checked his watch standing in the doorway of the cockpit. Lt. Peletier and the new guy, a Navy pilot by the name of Capt. Douglas, sat patiently waiting for a response. So far there hadn't been one.

Carol repeated the hail again as the captain pulled back on the stick giving the plane slight lift.

Rick looked to see if the crew felt it. As he suspected, only Michonne turned from watching a lively game of Rummy to look at him. He shook his head slightly but she still rose from her seat over LCpl. Dixon's left shoulder to come over to him.

"What?" She asked when she was in close enough range to speak without alerting the group.

Rick hesitated before speaking.

"Don't even bother. That's why you could never beat me or Shane in poker. You have too many tells," She said elbowing him in the side as she moved into the doorway with him.

"I couldn't beat you 'cuz you're a card shark. And frankly, I'm glad they threw you out of their game." He had laughed when somewhere over France, the unflappable Marines in their company suddenly cried foul and accused her of hustling them at Texas Hold'em for their pot filled with candies.

Michonne feigned offense before smiling. "That's what years spent in the company of soldiers and diplomats gets you...well, that and a foul mouth."

Rick managed a small smile despite her inadvertent mention of his former friend. But she sobered quickly once she realized what she had just said.

"That was our third missed approach," Rick admitted to her quickly not wanting her to dwell on the other thing.

 _DRC was years ago now._ He couldn't and wouldn't allow Shane to become a pall that hung over them anytime they were together. His former friend still loomed large around all their interactions but he couldn't have that since he planned to be around Michonne as much as she'd allow from now on. The moment he'd heard her voice again he'd decided that. Their brief encounter in the stairwell had been an unintended preview. Although, to judge by her reaction, perhaps he had chosen the wrong moment to let her know that?

Rick shook the thought loose, right now he needed to take a page from her and focus on the pressing matters at hand. Namely, the fact that no one on the ground had responded to their hails and the entire base might have been lost. As they passed the air strip for the third time, it was obvious an in-air refuel was not happening and holding over Incirlik indefinitely was an impossibility.

 _They would have to land and gas up the old fashioned way._

Michonne looked into Rick's eyes in that knowing way she always had.

"We're landing?"

"I don't think we have any other choice." He answered solemnly.

Rick looked into the cockpit at Lt. Peletier, still working to reach anyone.

"Anything?" Michonne asked.

Carol looked back at Michonne and shook her head. "Only thing moving down there is a storm front coming in."

"You're kidding, right?"

"'Fraid not, ATIS reported that there's a thunderstorm coming in from the southwest. I'd guess it'll be here in thirty minutes."

"Atis? So you did speak to someone?" Michonne asked hopefully. "Someone is down there?"

"It's the Automated Terminal Information Service. It's just a recorded message to pilots, to let us know what's going on locally," Peletier explained.

Rick watched as Michonne's face fell and she gripped the doorframe.

"But the good news is, from that message we know someone was still manning the tower up to roughly four hours ago. The weather details are fresh and the NOTAM, Notice to Airmen, is current," Capt. Douglas added quickly. "We'll set her down quickly near the apron, get her fueled up and back in the air before anyone's the wiser."

Both Michonne and Carol cut the pilot with nearly identical expressions of disbelief. Despite everything going on, Rick had to stop himself from laughing at the looks on their faces. Michonne didn't know this but as Rick understood it, their captain was already aboard the _USS Arkansas_ in the Carrier Group at the outset. As a result, this was his first sortie since the outbreak had occurred and unfortunately with a statement like that, it showed.

Michonne looked at Rick and he shrugged noncommittally.

Captain Tobin Douglas had come to their rag-tag group highly recommended by General Claremont. According to the General, Douglas could land on a penny and take-off on a dime, pushing the 50,000 ton cargo plane like it was no bigger than a Mazda. Rick had no problem with his chosen flight crew of Lieutenants Peletier and the other unrelated Douglas, T-Dog, who had both already proven their mettle. Still, it had been impressed upon him to reconsider. Now, having heard that ridiculous statement, Rick began to wonder if Tobin was anything more than just Claremont's inside man.

"Alright then, Captain, when we land I'm gonna need you and Lt. Peletier to stay on board with Ms. Philippe and Dr. Mamet," Rick said evenly.

"You'll get no complaints from me, Captain."

Carol scowled at the cowardice inherent in that statement.

"We're staying long enough to refuel. That's it. We don't need any personnel outside unnecessarily," Rick said by way of explanation to all of them but particularly to Peletier.

"I'll get this bird on the ground and I'll let you handle the rest."

Rick caught the Lieutenant's eye roll before she went back to trying to raise anyone on the com.

"Let's go break the news," He said then to Michonne as he moved out of the doorway, headed to inform the other guys they were about to land.

* * *

01:43 EET

Incirlik Air Base, Adana, Turkey

There were sheets of rain pouring from the sky by the time their big C2 taxied down the runway. As they set down, Michonne looked for signs of life out the small cargo bay windows. All she could see, however, were abandoned and destroyed planes littering the strip. Ironically, in the end it had been the touchdown itself and not the process of landing in a thunderstorm that had proven to be the white-knuckle event. With decimated planes, vehicles and bodies strewn about the tarmac, it had been difficult to find an unobstructed length of runway in almost zero visibility to set down on. They'd come down low enough to almost touch ground and risen again a number of times in a process that ended up leaving them over 300 yards from where they needed to be.

Now they were on the ground and Rick was doing a weapons check with the crew before they went looking for the refueling station. Michonne looked around and watched the group as they got organized. As usual, Rick stood grim-faced and steady checking his gun and knife in their respective sleeves before checking the magazine of the M24 rifle PFC Rhee had given him. The others joked around mildly, trying to cut the tension.

He pulled yet another gun from a flap on his thigh and walked up to her.

"Take this, just in case. Judging by your performance on the roof, it looks like you still remember how to use it." He handed it to her properly, pointed down, grip first.

She hesitated, a sudden nauseating flash of dèja vu coming over her. The last time he'd slipped a gun to her it was through bloody, sweat-soaked palms and with panicked words meant to reassure. He was calmer now, they both were, but she could see the same dire concern for her safety in his eyes that had been there four years ago. It frightened her possibly more than the danger of the current circumstances. What made it worse was she felt the same way. The knowledge that he was going out there terrified her as much as being left behind did. He'd only just returned to her orbit. She couldn't lose him again.

She looked at him sadly, finally accepting the semiautomatic pistol from him reluctantly.

"This is my Colt. My dad gave it to me when I graduated from Basic. My grandad had given him a Python. It was this old-school, silver, long-barreled revolver. I loved that gun. When I was a kid, it was bigger'n me. Unfortunately, it wasn't service-issue, so I got this as a graduation gift instead. Now, you take care of it and it'll take care of you." Rick mustered a muted smile for a second as they both looked down at it in her hands.

Michonne nodded.

"Okay, Dr. Mamet, c'mon over here." Rick motioned for the nervous doctor with a sweep of the head.

Milton looked at LCpl. Dixon, who stood closest to him, as if for confirmation.

"What're you lookin' at me for, _he_ called you," Daryl grumbled.

Milton walked over to Rick and Michonne with hang-dog obedience.

"Look at her," Rick instructed roughly before relaxing his tone. "This is Gun Safety 101."

Michonne was surprised to be part of what she knew, from the many times she'd endured it herself, was going to be a quick and dirty refresher/tutorial. Holding the pistol flat across her two palms, she stood ready to assist. As if they'd done it many times before, which technically they had with her as the pupil, Rick pointed out the gun's anatomy. Milton seemed to appreciate Rick's thoroughness, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose studiously.

"We don't have time for the whole thing right now. This, she's holding, is a Colt M1911, it carries 8 rounds. The gun that the Lance Corporal gave you is a Beretta 9mm, there are 14 rounds in the clip, one in the chamber. _Important:_ always assume it's loaded, always assume there's one round chambered. _Never_ point this at anyone unless you plan to kill them. Not shoot, _kill_. Check the safety, here, before firing. Pull the trigger with your finger at a ninety degree angle, perpendicular to the direction you're shooting..." Milton nodded animatedly, as Michonne demonstrated, absorbing all the information flying by him like a sponge. This was just technical enough to engage his brilliant scientific mind.

"Keep your finger off the trigger, here, until you're ready to fire. When you squeeze, count to one each time before releasing it. When it goes off, the shot and recoil _will_ surprise you. Do not close your eyes and _do not_ _flinch_. It will throw off your aim..."

Michonne noticed, as she angled the gun in her hands, placing her finger along the trigger guard to show the doctor, they had an audience. The others hovered closer as they straightened themselves, pretending they weren't listening as well. She knew without question every one of these soldiers knew this information like the back of their hands. Still, there was something strangely comforting in the authority and calm of Rick's voice and demeanor as he instructed them. She felt it herself, always had.

"Got it?" Rick asked adjusting his knife again in its sheath on his hip.

Milton nodded emphatically. "Thank you, Captain."

"Yes, thank you, Captain," Michonne repeated mockingly, surprised with herself that she was able to muster any mirth in the face of the current situation.

Rick gave her a mildly amused look.

"Alright, Regulators, mount up!" T-Dog announced with a decisive clap of his hands. Carol, PFC Rhee, LCpl. Dixon and Michonne all chuckled.

"God, I used to love that movie." Daryl surprised everyone by announcing suddenly in his gravelly voice, inciting a round of nervous laughter. "Guess that's all over now."

Everyone sobered quickly as Rick turned to face her and Milton.

"Go into the cabin with Tobin, he'll lock the door." Rick directed Dr. Mamet as the rest of the group headed toward the back of the plane and began to position themselves beside the large cargo bay doors. Rick caught Michonne by the arm before she could follow them.

"I want you to go with Milton," He whispered to her. "Don't come out until we're back. The cargo doors will be open for minutes. Anything could get on as we're getting off."

"That's why I'm staying out here until we get the doors closed again. I don't want anything lying in wait for you guys to get back either." She resisted the beseeching look in his eyes.

They stared at each other for a moment, saying the same thing without words.

"Listen to me," Rick spoke barely above a whisper, him facing the cockpit, while she faced the group waiting at the doors. "If anything happens…."

Their shoulders were the only point of contact between them as he leaned in and spoke firmly. "Standard-issue in Tobin's vest is an ASEK knife. It's multi-use, it can break the plexiglass if for any reason you need to get out, okay? You get that, first. Only use the gun as a last resort. I heard some of the guys on the ship that have seen these things in action say that their hearing is very good."

She nodded grimly, she knew that to be true as well.

"So try not to make a lot of noise. If you have to run, don't worry, you run. I'll find you."

Michonne was stunned at his implication. It was clear he was giving her directions and permission, in case anything happened, to leave Milton and Capt. Douglas behind. He was implying they might be dead already. Michonne stood back.

"I know. But I won't run." She answered in a matching tone, gravely serious. "We _need_ him."

"And I need _you_."

Michonne said nothing at first but spoke volumes with her hand as it grasped and squeezed his forearm. "We'll be okay."

"We ready, Cap?" PFC Rhee interrupted impatiently from the control panel to the bay doors.

"Just be fast and come back," Michonne whispered, relenting to follow Milton into the cabin. She closed and locked the door as Rick stood watching.

* * *

01:59 EET

"Everyone, on me," Rick directed.

It was decided that Rick and LCpl. Dixon would take point, with PFC Rhee and T-Dog flanking them protecting Lt. Peletier in the center. She was the most important member of their foraging party. She was best able to identify the type of jet fuel needed for the plane.

Originally, T-Dog was going to be the one who filled that need but Carol had insisted on coming along. She maintained that not only was she better suited to the job but also they'd need the extra hands as it would take at least two carts carrying four drums apiece to get them where they were going. It disgusted Rick that during none of the haggling between Carol and T-Dog had there been a single peep of objection from Tobin.

 _And he was leaving the safety of Michonne and the doctor in the hands of this guy?_

Rick banished the thought, nodding to give the private the go ahead to open the bay doors. With a flip of a switch, the doors began to move with a slow, hydraulic hiss. Rick and Dixon lifted their rifles simultaneously, turning on the mounted flashlights. The doors opened vertically giving forth to the wet darkness outside like a drooling, gaping maw. It was nearly pitch black out, save the runway lights and sporadically-placed floodlights out near the hangars. They stepped down the ramp into the pouring rain.

Carol silently tapped Rick's shoulder to alert him that she was at his back. Rhee did the same to Dixon as he swung left stepping out.

"Ten o'clock!" T-Dog called calmly as a figure darted out of the darkness directly at Daryl. He caught it with a shot that sounded like a pellet hitting a wet blanket. Soon the sound came like hail as a small wave of those things came out of inky blackness forcing them all to open fire at once.

"Shit!" Rick called as their tight formation fell to the necessity of moving toward the hangar quickly. "Just get there!"

They made a sprint of the three football fields between the plane and the apron.

With the weapons and gear, the run seemed twice as long, sweat mingling with the rain that coated Rick's entire body. As they closed in on the hangar, another group of infected emerged from the dark and driving rain, running across the taxiway from the field on the other side. Their group had been exposed by the bright lights attached to the building, their movement attracting attention. Unlike the last group, that appeared to be made up primarily of civilians, these were military personnel. Turkish and American soldiers still in their uniforms or camo, ran at them like a mindless, ravenous horde. The sight was ghastly. Coming back to their senses; however, they put them down in a flurry of shots and stood for a moment dumbfounded at the sight of their fellow servicemen and women lying dead in a pile at their feet.

Before anyone could even register what had happened, an infected still dressed in his Navy blues, side swiped T-Dog with the force of a NFL defensive tackle. He and the creature skidded across the pavement as he attempted frantically to fight the thing off. They came to a stop just short of Glenn's feet as the young man looked on stupefied. The thing battered and clawed at T-Dog until Rick stepped up and put a bullet in the back of its head. Its body slumped forward on top of T-Dog.

"T-T?" PFC Rhee stuttered. "You okay, man?"

"Stay back." Rick cautioned. But Glenn moved toward T-Dog's body lying in front of him. "Rhee, stand back!"

T-Dog pushed the dead body off and lurched to his feet.

"Teddy?" Carol spoke in a plaintive tone, as if she already suspected the worst, though she attempted to step forward anyway.

"Don't." Dixon threw out his arm blocking her.

T-Dog's eyes were bloodshot and glazed over as he looked around as if trying to locate the voices without the benefit of his vision. He craned his head left and then right as they spoke around him.

"Glenn, step back NOW!" Rick ordered as he motioned to them all to take one gigantic step backward.

PFC Rhee seemed to finally hear their voices speaking to him at that moment. The same moment that T-Dog chose to lunge for him. There was immediately a resounding crack that echoed through the dark as T-Dog's head whipped to one side, his head exploding like ripe fruit, splattering a red mist all over Glenn's shocked face.

"Sniper!" Carol cried out as they all ducked, scattering and scrambling for cover in various directions.

Rick ran behind an overturned jeep and looked up trying to triangulate the shooter's position. He hoped that the expert marksman who made that shot from what could only be over fifty yards away at one of the nearest buildings, in the rain, was on their side.

"Rick," Dixon breathed from just behind the lip of the gigantic hangar door, nodding toward something off to his right side.

Rick looked up onto the rooftop of a nearby building. Through the downpour, he could make out brief flashes of light cutting through the rain, like a flashlight being quickly switched off and on in a noticeable pattern. _Morse code_.

Rick hadn't even thought about Morse code since a cryptography class he'd taken in school. Luckily, the message was simple.

"C-H-3?" Glenn asked, still wiping his face with his sleeve, from a position behind a crate just inside the open hangar doorway.

"Get on channel three." Rick explained, pulling out his walkie-talkie.

"Michonne, go to three." He said breaking the radio-silence they'd agreed upon.

"Is everyone alright?" She asked, her anxiety bleeding through the seeming calm of her voice.

"No," He answered honestly. "Go to three, but don't talk. Just listen."

Rick switched channels as the others did also.

"Am I supposed to thank you?" He asked the person on the radio in a low tone. They still didn't know where the next wave of those things would come from.

"I can see why you wouldn't think so," The voice on the other end replied through light static. "But it'd be nice, all the same."

There was silence. Glenn looked expectantly at Rick while Dixon and Carol just took on identical expressions of skepticism.

"Okay, I guess I got my answer, then," The young and identifiably American voice said finally. "You the folks that were headed to Korea? You're in a tough spot, my friends."

"You our mid-air refuel?" Rick asked directing Carol silently to start identifying the right drums of fuel. Daryl jumped up from his crouch to join her further inside.

"Nope. Those were some of the guys you just shot. We lost them when we lost the radio tower, Air Traffic Control. Aren't enough of us left now to properly screw in a light bulb, let alone fly a refuel mission." The voice chuckled morbidly.

"By the way, I'm sorry about your friend but you don't have much time once they go Zeke," The voice added. "FYI, I'd get out of there if I were you."

"Rick! These fuckin' drums look like swiss-damn-cheese." Daryl whisper-yelled from a few feet away inspecting the stacks closest to them with Carol.

"What happened to the jet fuel?" Rick asked their new friend.

"There was a firefight in there with those things. That's how we lost our pilots. Most likely you're standing in it. Like I said, I'd get outta there."

They all looked down at their feet quickly at his words. It was hard to see much once inside the darkened hangar but as the flashlights on their guns illuminated their feet it was obvious, they were all standing in a strange combination of oil, water and a dark substance that was probably blood. It coated the floor as far into the hanger as they could see. Close to the massive doorway, the driving rain tamped down on the odor but now that he realized what it was, Rick was certain further inside the gasoline smell would be absolutely overpowering.

"Why the hell didn't this whole place go up?" He asked the voice, gesturing for the group to exit rapidly.

"That's a good question. A section did before they went and put it out, the rain did the rest but by then we'd lost our firefighters."

"So the jet fuel is gone?" Glenn asked raising his voice above the requisite whisper.

Daryl scowled at him.

"The fuel?" Rick asked again, becoming frustrated by the matter-of-fact and evasive tone of the sniper.

"Oh there's tons of it. Right under your feet, thousands of tons in fact, but some genius detached the hoses trying to fly off in his F-15 while it was still fueling. Let me tell you, that didn't end well for him."

"So there's no fuel?" Carol asked distressed.

Rick knew how she felt. They were most definitely out on the ragged edge now and there didn't seem to be a solution. He sighed heavily, looking up into the dark sky as water pelted his face.

Finally, it seemed, the rain was beginning to let up. But it occurred to Rick suddenly then, maybe that wasn't such a good thing. The rain had been muffling their noise, obscuring their presence. It had been hard for them to negotiate the run from the plane to the hanger with the infected hot on their heels but the rain also made it that much harder for those things to locate them. When he thought about it, as they stood on the tarmac of one of the busiest airbases in southeastern Europe, it was strange really. It had been as if they were totally alone at a nearly abandoned outpost from the outset. At least a thousand people cycled through this installation at any given time. But except for the two small groups they'd seen, the place seemed almost totally deserted. Rick looked around.

 _Where were all the bodies?_

"Ahh," The voice on the radio cut into his thoughts to say ominously. "I think he's finally starting to get it.


	13. Chapter 13

February 2011

Checkpoint Lima, DRC (72 km from Kisangani)

Rick resisted the urge to pace since Shane was watching. He really wasn't in the mood to hear Shane's mouth or any of the smart ass jokes he had stored away. Although, Rick was forced to reconsider that after a moment. The truth was Shane had been as quiet as Rick for the entire ride from the city. Since he'd gotten that frantic call from Maggie, Shane had been a bundle of tightly coiled nerves and as silent as the grave.

 _He really loved this girl._

The thought only just occurred to Rick, despite the fact that Shane and Maggie had already been dating for five months now. The thing was, Shane always loved them, honestly and truly. He'd loved Simone and Misty, Sarah Beth and Brianna, Fantine and Andrea, even Clara. Something, Rick suspected, even the good doctor had chosen not to share with her friend Michonne. It was just that the "love" always had a shelf-life of roughly two to three months. But this thing with Maggie was different somehow. The idea was enough to intrigue Rick, or it would have been on any other day.

Tonight, though as he stood leaning against the boom gate of the USAfriCOM checkpoint, he wished there was someone he could strangle. A young hospital corpsman stood a few steps away with a stretcher at the ready for what they weren't yet sure wasn't a fatality. The idea of it made Rick livid every time he thought about it. _Shane_ was the one who knew anything at all about what was going on. _Shane_ was the one who had gotten a call. Rick still hadn't heard from Michonne. She could be the wounded one for all he knew. Although, the truth was, his mind would not allow him to go there. At this point, all they knew was that Maggie, Kevin and Michonne had gone east, past the checkpoint into the no man's land that all employees were very plainly forbidden to, into the countryside for some little girl and someone had been shot.

Rick had even seen this girl; that fact probably roiled him most. He'd been there when Michonne walked her into the building that morning and he'd just waved them both in. He hadn't asked any questions. He hadn't even heeded the slight prickle he felt when she looked at him with her big, haunted brown eyes that spelled nothing but trouble for him and his. Michonne had vouched for her and that had been enough —as it always was. Now, three of his staff members were out of bounds and one of them had been shot and was quite possibly dead.

Rick turned and looked over at Shane, leaned against the front grill of their truck hugging himself, his head hung down guiltily. Rick didn't know yet how this was his fault but he knew somehow it was. Back when he was still dating Dr. Lissouba, Rick had known she was taking Shane out of bounds to places she, as a Congolese native, knew about. But he'd chosen to ignore it, figuring Clara had to know the safe places to go and the places not to a whole lot better than the people who'd drawn up their boundary map. So he'd let it go. _A mistake, clearly._ Now Rick would bet, if he did that sort of thing, that Shane took Maggie out of bounds to impress her. And in turn, she was now taking Michonne and others out of bounds —for God knows what reasons.

 _No, that was officially where this nonsense had to end. Period._

Rick unclenched his fist, looking at the redness that was spreading up his ring finger around his wedding ring.

There was a squawk in the corpsman's walkie-talkie that he answered quickly.

"We think they're coming, Sir," The young man informed him about a minute before they saw the distant headlights themselves.

The soldiers in charge of the checkpoint came forward as the car approached, as Rick stepped way back. The soldiers held their guns at the ready, in case it wasn't who they all thought it was. But as the car came barreling up the semi-paved road only to come to an abrupt halt a few feet away from the gate, Rick could see Michonne clearly in the driver's seat. He breathed a brief internal sigh of relief as he saw her. Then the anger returned as he walked toward the car. The soldier at the boomgate lifted it smoothly so Rick didn't even have to slow down as he made straight for her.

It was a flurry of activity around them as the corpsman assisted Maggie in dragging Kevin out of the backseat and onto a stretcher. Shane rushed up to assist them while Rick stayed out of their way, other than to look Kevin over. Maggie, covered in enough blood to make them question whether Kevin was still alive or not, sputtered nearly incomprehensible things to the corpsman. Together with Shane, they rushed Kevin away with Maggie following close behind.

"Rick!" Shane called, pulling his attention away from the daggers he was staring at Michonne. "I'm going with her," Shane said holding Maggie's shoulders and running with her to the waiting helicopter.

If there was any hope for Kevin, he was going to have to be airlifted to the small Army/Navy hospital in Kisangani. Rick nodded turning back to Michonne almost immediately. Her head was pressed against the steering wheel and if he wasn't mistaken she was crying. Right then, Rick didn't care. He swung the driver's side door open as if he wanted to pull it off the hinges —and a part of him did.

"Get out of the car," He ordered her roughly. " _Now_."

He looked around but the only people within earshot were the two Army sentries and they seemed rather intent on not hearing anything, their eyes trained on the oncoming darkness.

Michonne finally lifted her head from the wheel and looked up at him. To his surprise, her face was entirely dry, though she was breathing hard enough to hyperventilate. His expression softened, only just a little, and he reached into the car and took her by the wrist. Checking his watch, he took her pulse. It was elevated but she wasn't in danger of passing out.

"I said, get out of the car," He repeated, brooking no defiance this time. "Leave the keys, we're taking mine."

He stood to one side and watched as she slowly pulled herself out of the car. She was a mess: dirty, covered in blood and sweat. _Rick really needed to know what happened_. He just couldn't find a way to articulate that desire right then without barking further. He was just so angry with her and scared for her and hurt by her. Michonne paused then turned to go to the back seat.

"What are you doing?" He asked impatiently. He watched her with one hand resting on the gun scabbard on his hip.

"Just," Michonne spoke for the first time, her voice scratchy and hoarse. "Just gimme a sec. I need to get something okay?" She said testily.

It irked him that she had the nerve to be angry _and_ slow! She was moving at a snail's pace. He was fighting the strong urge to just throw her over his shoulder and head back to the car. Michonne pulled her old brown duffle from the back seat and swung it over her head.

"That couldn't wait? I'm gonna have one of the AfriCOM guys drive the car back tomorrow."

"No. It couldn't wait," She spat back nastily.

"Wait a second," Rick turned his hands in on himself for emphasis. "You're angry with _me_?"

 _He could not believe his fucking ears!_

Michonne just glared but didn't reply, walking away from him toward the clearly-marked light blue UN SUV that was parked less than a yard away.

Rick waited until they were both in the car and pulling away from the checkpoint before he said anything more.

"Article Twelve, subsection three of the UN Mission Safety Protocol states "No member of the UN staff shall, without the express permission of the Head of Mission, Chief Security Advisor or the Director of Security Management, venture into—"

"I know what it says," She cut him off.

Rick had never been this officious with her before, had never raised his voice at her before —not that he was yelling now but he wanted to. He really _really_ wanted to. He felt like Lori must have, when berating him for agreeing to yet another assignment at a mission. Although if the abject frustration he was feeling now was what his wife felt with him, he owed her an apology. _A great number of them._ He just wanted to shake Michonne and ask her what the hell she had been thinking about, either leading or following Maggie into a war zone.

Particularly now, US and UN members had targets on their backs as Pop Negan's border skirmishes with Congolese, Rwandan and Ugandan forces were on the rise. As allies of the prevailing governments in all three countries, UN and USAfriCOM staff were not seen, by Negan's people, as the impartial forces they were supposed to be, but as colluding with the enemy. Which, in some serious senses, they were. As a result, the entire Eastern border wasn't safe for them. They'd lost the previous holder of Rick's position to that truth, assassinated as he made a trip through a Negan stronghold to an unallied position just inside Rwanda.

Michonne knew all that. So Rick couldn't see why she suddenly didn't understand that or why she would choose deliberately to ignore it. He looked out at the dark bumpy road ahead of them as he drove; it was a perfect metaphor for how he felt.

"Kevin may die."

"Please Rick, I already feel guilty. I don't need your help." Michonne put her face in her hands.

"You needed it today but you didn't ask," Rick said, stealing a glance at her as he drove and getting to the heart of the matter.

He could barely see her face by the light of the dashboard but she looked at him then and sighed.

"We had to go. We had to take Ariane back," She said, finally admitting to something. "Maggie was gonna do it alone. I couldn't let her, you know that."

"And what about telling me, Shane, Aarav, Samir, somebody?" He named the senior members of the Protection Coordination Unit of the Mission. "Instead, you take wet behind the ears _Kevin_?"

"Aarav's wife is having that baby any day now, so he can't leave the mission and Samir was off today."

"So what about Shane?" Rick said annoyed that she had a point. "Shane told me he saw you with that girl today. That he asked you and Maggie what was going on and you told him nothing!"

That was a part of the story that really irritated Rick. That Maggie had lied to Shane's face and Michonne had been complicit. Before today, Rick would have argued down anyone who tried to tell a story like that with Michonne's name attached.

"...We couldn't take you guys. 'Cuz you're white," She answered softly. "Ariane had been clear."

"Ariane is 16 years old." He guessed, though the truth was she looked younger. "Why are you listening to a teenager?"

"Ariane is seventeen, actually," Michonne said in what he assumed had to be a lame attempt at a joke. Rick was not laughing.

Michonne took another deep breath that made Rick's stomach flip before he even heard what she was about to say.

"She's one of DaDa Ngangabouka's wives."

Rick stopped the car on a dime. Michonne had to put a hand to the dashboard to brace herself. Luckily, they were still a few kilometers away from the city and thus on a dark stretch of road utterly alone or there might have been an accident.

"Rick!" Michonne exclaimed.

" _What did you just say?_ " He flipped on the overhead light and turned his whole body to face her.

Rick knew if looks could kill, Michonne would be stone-dead but he couldn't help it in that moment.

Michonne held up her palms defensively. "Look, I didn't know that when I brought her into the Mission, I swear! I only found out when Maggie decided to take her home. She said she had to go home or he'd kill her mother and brother."

Rick watched as Michonne's face went dark and her eyes became glassy and distant. He resented the fact that his whole chest constricted at the sight.

"They killed her mother anyway. Because we didn't get her back on time." A single tear slid down her cheek and he could see her fighting the rest. "They burned the woman alive in her house."

Rick felt sick. _These were the men she'd just faced and made it back to tell the tale?_

Michonne wiped her face roughly and no more tears fell, but her voice cracked as she tried to continue.

"She warned us. Ariane said she had come alone and she was willing to go home alone but she's a child! She came a hundred miles on foot! We couldn't let her do that on the way back. Who knows what she might have encountered? And I knew, okay Rick, I _knew_ you wouldn't be alright with us doing it but what could I do? So, instead of someone I knew would tell you immediately, I said let's bring Kevin. That was my bright idea. But they killed the woman anyway, took Ariane and then shot Kevin."

Michonne's face crumpled but as Rick reached for her shoulder, she fell back against the opposite passenger door and held him off with her hand.

"Don't," She croaked, turning away from him and toward the door.

Rick's heart broke for her. He saw how guilty she felt and it moved him deeply. He turned out the light and started up the car again. They drove in silence until the lights of Kisangani began to emerge in the distance.

"I'll take you home."

"No," She answered quickly. "Take me to the Mission. I have a report to fill out."

"Michonne, that can definitely wait until morning."

"For Kevin's sake, I want to get it all down while it's still fresh, plus I need to talk with Matt and Stavros."

Rick looked at her again, concerned about what could be so important she'd seek an audience with the head of the Mission in the middle of the night. Michonne looked back at him then, her expression solemn, her face creased with worry.

"I'm not positive, but I think one of DaDa's men just admitted to me that someone at USAfriCOM is selling them weapons."


	14. Chapter 14

***** **Author's Note** _ *****_

Hey _Guys, as ever, thank you for the lovely feedback! Couple things: Yes, this is another chapter! And no, it's not even your birthday! (But next Monday, it is mine. So here's an early birthday present). No, but really, the reason I'm posting another chapter_ is _actually that Chapter 13 was_ sooo _short. Like the last time I did this, I kinda feel like I short-change y'all when the chapter is less than 3,000 words. So, since Chapter 13 came in at about 2,500, I'm posting_ a second _chapter this Wednesday, Hope you like it!_

 _Oh, one last thing:_

 _ **StrongLikeMusic** I think it's safe to say that Rick and Michonne told everyone only what they needed to hear, and not even Hershel knows the full story of what happened to Maggie. (He doesn't know that, of course)._

 _ **BandM** You asked a while ago and I just realized I never answered. Since I figure you probably aren't the only person who's wondering about it, I'm just going to answer it here: Once the last of the Army completely abandoned Ft. Benning (this was after the more organized evac that Beth and the kids were a part of), the civilians and military personnel still left behind were on their own in a situation where the infected had already breached the base. As a result, there weren't any survivors. RIP Lori and Grandpop Grimes :-( _

_Welp, there weren't any more questions that I noticed but if you guys have others, I'll be happy to answer them in subsequent notes._

 _Until then..._

7/27/15 02:21 EET

Incirlik AFB, Adana, Turkey

"Ahh...I think he's finally starting to get it."

 _Get what?_

Michonne looked over at Milton, sitting listening as well in the jumpseat across from her. He seemed to know what she was asking and shrugged.

She looked over at Tobin, who was sitting in the front of the small cockpit, in his pilot's seat still fiddling with knobs, and checking and rechecking his instrumentation. She sighed in frustration. It was as if he were on a different planet. _Did he fail to grasp the implications of the conversation that Rick was having with the mystery man on the radio?_ If they were unable to extract any jet fuel from the underground stores to power this plane, it was barely more than a giant metal coffin.

 _They had to get off this plane_ , she realized suddenly.

Maybe that was the thing that Rick was realizing. Michonne jumped to her feet, startling Milton and went to look out the front windscreen.

"What?" Milton asked urgently. "What do you know?"

"We have to rejoin the group," She said to him leaning over the copilot's seat to peer outside, "We can't wait here any longer. This plane isn't going anywhere."

That did the trick in rousing Tobin from his fantasy world. "Excuse me?"

He turned in his seat and looked up at Michonne as if she'd just blinked into existence at that very moment.

"This thing isn't going anywhere. We have to get off and get to the group."

"So what are you suggesting?" Tobin asked densely.

"I'm not suggesting, Capt. Douglas. I'm telling you, this plane _is not_ going anywhere. We have to get _off_."

"No, n-no," Milton sputtered frantically. "Captain Grimes said to stay here."

Michonne looked out again. Even with her almost 20/20 vision, Rick and his people were barely ants under the lights of the hangar in the far off distance. They might as well have been on the dark side of the moon. Plus, they'd already been attacked twice just making the trip to the hangar, and she was pretty sure she gathered they were now down at least one man. Sitting patiently waiting to be rescued had never been something she was good at and she'd already had to do it once before in the past forty-eight hours. She didn't have any intention of doing it again if she could help it.

Still, Dr. Mamet had a point. Rick could not have been clearer when he told them to stay put until he returned, but a tingling in the pit of her stomach, one that had rarely done her wrong in the past was telling her not to wait.

"Yes, he did. When he thought we were going to be refueling _this_ plane. But you heard them, they can't refuel this plane. They can't refuel any planes anymore."

Milton fell silent, terrified, yet seeing the logic in Michonne's words.

"Then they'll come back for us." He resolved. Folding his arms like a stubborn child.

That was undoubtedly true, she knew. How many people though _—_ people they couldn't spare _—_ would die in the attempt?

Michonne watched Milton, fiddling nervously with his round, wire-framed glasses, cleaning them compulsively. He was the braintrust of the entire operation. He was also shaking like a leaf at the mere suggestion that they leave the safety of the plane. There was little chance he could walk straight, let alone shoot it. She looked at Tobin and came to the same conclusion Rick must have when he told her about the Captain's knife. The man was useless. Rick recognized Tobin wasn't to be relied upon. She realized then, protecting Milton in Rick's absence would fall to her and he obviously couldn't be moved right now.

She sighed. They had to do something, _that_ she was sure of. They were sitting ducks here.

Tobin, thinking the matter settled went back to the instrument panel, looking at things. Michonne looked back out the large windscreen. The rain was easing. If Adana was anything like the parts of Turkey she'd been to before, this rain was going to give way to a crystal clear night sky and, if the moon was in the right phase, a very brightly lit night. That could work in her favor, maybe they could—

"...So you're saying that those things don't like the rain?" Rick asked then.

Michonne didn't realize she'd been tuning out the conversation that was still happening on the radio. She saw Milton perk up too, listening intently.

"I don't know what they like and don't like. What I am saying is we notice they don't move a lot in the rain," The voice answered.

"What, Doctor?" Michonne said when she thought she saw a lightbulb go off in Milton's brain.

"They're hydrophobic," Milton answered as if things were dawning on him.

"They're what now?" Tobin said skeptically.

"Afraid of water." Michonne answered as doubtful as Tobin was.

"No, listen, that makes sense." Milton adjusted his glasses excitedly. "They're spreading this disease through bites, right? In order for bites to be an effective mode of transmission, the saliva has to attain a certain viral load, meaning microns of virus per microliter of saliva. Normally, it couldn't because people and animals swallow their saliva constantly. The average human swallows 2400 times a day, that's roughly three pints of saliva a day. That's why infections are very rarely transmitted through kisses. Ever notice you can kiss your boyfriend when he's sick and you probably won't catch it?"

Michonne unexpectedly blushed, when Milton looked at her. The image of Rick kissing her that morning coming instantly back to her mind. She put a hand to her mouth self-consciously. Milton noticed with a brief frown but kept going.

"...That's because saliva's usually a very ineffective vector. Blood to blood transmission is optimal. Sex, transfusion, etc. A hydrophobic organism is a means to ameliorate this. Hydrophobic animals are afraid of water and liquid of all kinds. Including drinking water or swallowing their own saliva. Which in turn allows the viral count in saliva, gathering unconsciously in the mouth, to rise to sufficient levels for infection to spread. It makes a lot of sense."

"Like Rabies," Michonne said with a shudder, thinking of "Andrew" slobbering all over the glass at the consulate trying to get at her.

Milton smiled approvingly. " _Exactly_ , Ms. Philippe. Exactly like Rabies."

"So these things are _rabid_?" Tobin asked, appropriately disquieted by the thought.

Dr. Mamet rolled his eyes.

"Captain, it's far more complicated than that," He replied contemptuously, but then conceded. "But for lack of a better term right now, yes."

"I just thought the rain was fucking with their ability to locate people," Tobin muttered surprising both Michonne and Milton.

He hadn't seemed to be on the same page as them all this time. Michonne was shocked he'd been giving it any thought at all.

"Well, Captain, rain or I'm assuming any precipitation that interferes with the hearing would not be ideal for them as well." Milton hypothesized. "They are operating on the most basic brain functions, these things are virtually brain-dead and our visual cortex is one of our most complex functions aside from the higher cognitive processes: emotion, reason, memory, etc. Hearing however, though complex is somewhat lower on that scale. That's why it's the last sense to go when you die."

Michonne was fascinated. A memory of the nurses at her mother's hospice reassuring her that her mom could still hear her, suddenly came back to Michonne. She remembered how they'd encouraged her to tell her mom how much she was loved. At the time, it had just seemed like nonsense, meant to make a little girl feel better. She teared now a little at the recollection.

"So wind, rain, snow are all our friends? That settles it, I'm movin' to Vail when we get back," Tobin joked inappropriately.

Michonne dabbed her eye with her thumb. This was important information. She lifted the walkie-talkie to her mouth and pressed the button.

"Rick? Rick?" She said urgently into it. "Find shelter now! Mamet says they are afraid of water and the rain is about to stop any minute."

"Well, heeeello there! I guess this was a party line, huh?" The other voice said. "The plot thickens. And where, may I ask, are you?"

Michonne didn't speak and Milton watched her anxiously during an extended silence.

"Aren't you two peas in a pod?" The voice chuckled. "Well, Rick, is it? Your girlfriend is right. You need to find shelter ASAP. As soon as the rain eases up, they're gonna come out in force from wherever they're hiding now."

* * *

02:33 EET

Rick scowled with irritation as water dripped into his eyes. _He'd told her not to speak._ Still, it was good, nevertheless, to get confirmation of his thoughts.

"What the hell is that?" Glenn whispered.

Rick turned to the young man to see he'd pulled his large, high-powered, torch-style flashlight out of his rucksack and was beaming it into the darkness. Only what they had been seeing, or really not seeing, wasn't just the dense blackness of the dark.

Illuminated by the strong beam of light, Rick could actually make out a vibrating mass moving slowly in the darkness. It was bodies, hundreds of them, huddled together as if against a bitter cold, heads hung downward, as if they were deactivated automatons. Mamet and the voice on his radio were right, the rain confused them, rendered them, for the most part, inert. This would only be to his group's advantage for a few minutes longer.

"Jesus, Mary an' Joseph," Carol exclaimed just as one of the things in the dark looked up suddenly, directly into the beam.

"Shut it off, numbnuts," Daryl said and Glenn obeyed, a second too late.

The creature hissed and headed straight for them, followed by ten or twenty more that seemed to "activate" at the same moment.

"Geezus!" Rick exclaimed still clutching his walkie in a vice grip. "Run for the plane!"

"You rang?" The voice on the radio said then. "Listen Rick, you won't make your plane. But we're in the B building. Second from your right, about 50 yards in front of you. Run faster than you're going right now and you just might make it."

They broke into an all out sprint. Carol faltered a step, slipping no doubt in all the slick oil she'd been previously standing in.

"C'mon!" Daryl shouted at Carol, turning to shoot wildly at the things following.

In the last 50 feet, a hail of bullets rained down from above them mowing down the first wave of things closest to them. Rick looked up and saw two figures firing from the top of the building. A small unobtrusive door opened in the side of the building then.

"Here!" A woman's voice called from the distance.

They headed in that direction, Glenn reaching the door first. He and the woman turned then and laid down additional suppressive fire for them. Daryl grabbed Carol by the arm and pulled her the rest of the way. Rick made sure he was last in. Just barely shooting one in the face and shutting the door before the horde was on them.

They all stood doubled over, gasping for air in the darkened, narrow hallway.

"Thank you," Rick said finally when he could speak.

"Yeah, thanks," Glenn echoed breathlessly in the dark.

"No problem," She replied.

"Rick?" Michonne's voice came through the radio again.

"We made it." He answered simply.

"Congratulations! Well done," The voice cut in.

"What is this dude's deal, huh?" Daryl said with irritation. Rick knew he didn't know Daryl all that well yet but he was still fairly certain Dixon planned to deck this guy the minute they met.

"That's just Jesus. Don't pay him any attention. He's just like that."

"Jesus, _really_?" Carol remarked incredulously, still clutching her chest and gasping.

"That his real name?" Rick asked.

"Nah, it's Rovia, Paul. They just used to call him Jesus 'cuz he saves. He's our resident expert sniper, the eye in the sky. He's our heavy arms instructor here on base. He can shoot you a royal flush from well over 2000 yards away."

"Jesus," Glenn uttered on an exhale.

" _Exactly_ ," The woman concurred. "We wouldn't still be alive if it weren't for him."

She continued leading them down the hall and further into the building. "Watch your step, it was a bloodbath in here."

Through the dark, the group followed, navigating a maze of bodies strewn everywhere. This had clearly been an administrative building. The offices, walls and cubicles were now splattered with blood as bodies lay across desks and chairs. Some lay across the floor in piles.

"It took us hours to clear this building but we got it. It's connected by a sky bridge to the hospital wing, so we have to keep the lights dim and the sound to a minimum, 'cuz Zeke is in full residence over there," She whispered stepping carefully over another body.

"Zeke?" Rick asked. _Jesus had used that word too._

"You know, Z for zombies, Zeke," She explained like it was obvious.

"So you know what they are?" Glenn asked hopefully.

"I mean, I've seen _Night of the Living Dead_ , so, um yeah. I didn't need a refresher course if that's what you're asking."

Rick shook his head at Glenn. _It wouldn't be that easy._

"Okay so, we broke open all the vending machines in there, if you're hungry or anything, feel free," She said as if playing hostess and pointing to what obviously was once a break room.

Daryl hopped over two bodies blocking the doorway and retrieved a bag of chips and a soda from the machines.

Carol pointed her flashlight right in his face.

"What?" He said blinking and shielding his eyes. "Maybe ya'll ain't hungry but I haven't eaten in twelve hours."

Rick shrugged, releasing his rifle to swing at his side. "Hand me a bag."

"Yeah, that a Diet Pepsi?" Carol added, putting her sidearm back in the holster.

"I'll take Doritos if they're any in there," Glenn said at the same time.

"Uh-huh, that's what I thought. Get 'em yourself." Daryl said but still handed his soda to Carol as he stepped back out of the pantry.

A few minutes later, the young woman led them upstairs to the executive suites of the building. Made up of four large offices and an expansive foyer, the space made sense as their base. With only five rooms to monitor and protect this space would be easier to defend than the maze of offices and cubicles downstairs. The room was completely empty though.

"Where are your people?" Rick asked looking around.

"What people? Jesus told you. We lost almost everyone in the initial wave and then the rest trying to prepare to refuel your plane and clear this building. It's just us now."

"You and the two folks on the roof?" Glenn said, not hiding his amazement or disappointment.

The woman nodded. "And now you guys, I guess."

Rick watched Daryl move around the room quietly checking the doors and windows. He stopped at the window overlooking the runway. Peering through the shades he'd cracked with his fingers, he looked down on what Rick assumed was a growing herd, intently.

"By the way, who are you? All we knew was we got a message from on high that there was a VIP flight coming through and we needed to refuel you." She asked then, pulling Rick back to the conversation.

"I'm Captain Rick Grimes, that's Lt. Peletier, Carol. PFC Rhee, Glenn and Lance Corporal Daryl Dixon," Rick said going around the room.

The young woman, who he could now see through the dim auxiliary lights that shone from the corners on this floor, was a very comely latina with a stern face, nodded at each of them in turn.

"If you don't mind terribly I'm gonna skip the salute, Captain. I'm Staff Sergeant Rosita Espinosa, upstairs is Sergeant First Class Sasha Williams and Chief Warrant Officer Rovia, like I mentioned before."

"You rang?" A voice coming through the door behind them asked.

Reflexively, they all spun and trained their guns on the source. The man at the door threw his hands up in surrender. Even with guns in his face, he smiled winsomely, his huge blue eyes taking them all in at once.

"Whoa! At ease. I'm on your team, AKA I'm alive. I think we can agree there isn't any reason to alter that fact."

They all lowered their weapons quickly, except for Daryl, who glared.

"Speak for yourself. I think a bullet in that mouth of yours might be'n improvement." Daryl said harshly.

Rick tutted him quietly, gesturing for Daryl to lower his weapon as well. He complied reluctantly, moving away from them and back to the window in irritation.

"Already made more fans, Mr. Rovia. I told you not to mess with them," Sgt. Williams said moving out of the stairwell past Jesus.

"Jesus, Sasha, this is Rick, Carol, Glenn and over there, that's Daryl," Espinosa introduced.

As the ranking officer of the three in her group, Sasha reached across and shook each of their hands in introduction. She had the strongest grip Rick had every felt from a woman in his life.

"You, the lovely lady on the radio that finally convinced our boy here to make a move?" Jesus asked Carol. "Smart thinking."

"Rick," Daryl called to him softly from his spot at the window.

"No," Carol answered hesitantly.

"Oh no?" Jesus asked casually, moving out of the doorway of the stairwell to rest his large "Light 50" sniper's rifle on the receptionist's desk near her. "Where's she then? I liked her voice."

"Rick," Daryl whispered again impatiently.

Rick was starting to agree with Daryl that this guy's attitude could be well-improved by some buckshot in his ass. The smugness that "Jesus" exuded was getting on Rick's very last nerve.

"She's on the plane that you just told us isn't gonna get off the ground," Rick answered reluctantly. Despite the overwhelming desire to deck him, Rick couldn't see any other compelling reason to keep Jesus or his compatriots in the dark any longer.

"Well, that's just unfortunate then," Jesus said with a sigh.

"Why?" Rick watched as he and Sgt. Williams exchanged a concerned glance.

"Yo Rick, get your ass over here, man!" Daryl said forcefully, speaking as loudly as he dared.

Startled, Rick strode quickly to Daryl's position at the window and looked out where he was pointing. As promised, the rain had almost entirely subsided and the tarmac was thick with creatures. Hundreds of them. They blocked the entire front of the building and he could see distantly their sheer numbers torpedoed any serious plan to get back to the plane right now.

"...'Cuz, she's gonna be trapped in that tin bird for the foreseeable future," Jesus informed them as if he was breaking bad news.

Rick could feel the bristles of aggravation and impatience traveling up the back of his neck. In a minute, Jesus wasn't just going to have to worry about Daryl.

 _He was just one more smart-ass remark from Rick beating the everl—_

"What the fuck?" Daryl exclaimed suddenly.

Rick wrenched the blinds aside and pulled up the window to look out with his palms on the sill. The bristles turned instantly into a chill running down his spine as Rick saw light flood the cockpit and cabin compartments on their plane as it turned on and the two front propellers slowly began to spin.

"What the hell are they doing?" Sasha asked coming up behind Daryl and echoing Rick's thoughts exactly.


	15. Chapter 15

*** Author's Note***

 _Hey Everyone! Thank you for the early B-day wishes. I really appreciated them. It's my Birthday Today! And so I wanted to make sure that I thanked you all again for your gift of reading and commenting! You guys don't understand, you really make my day with your comments, questions and speculation. I love that y'all are invested enough in the story that you keep coming back to see where Rick and Michonne's adventures take them. I promise if you keep sticking with me, it's somewhere good. Thank you again. Until next time!_

March 2011

Kisangani, DRC

"...I don't know what you're expectin' me to do, Maggie!" Michonne could hear Shane's voice through the closed door as she walked up the hall.

"Well, you can't tell me no one knows anything and expect me to believe it!" She yelled back. "You said you knew people, Shane. Where are these people?"

Michonne already knew what they were arguing about without having to ask. In the past three weeks, Maggie had grown obsessed with locating Ariane. Michonne understood, the young girl haunted her dreams as well but Maggie wouldn't or couldn't let it go. Rick and Matt had instituted a complete Mission lockdown in the face of what had happened and what Michonne had told them about her suspicions. As a result, not just people but information, that had previously flowed more porously across the border, had been cut off.

Meanwhile, more than a few USAfriCOM senior officials had marched indignantly through the UN offices since Michonne's revelation. As a result, while most didn't know what precisely she had said or done besides crossing the border without permission, it had made her persona non grata amongst her fellow Americans and a lot of the UN staff. Michonne tried to take it in stride but with even Rick keeping her at arm's length, it was getting difficult.

"I don't know what you want from me? I'm doing the best that I can! And I really don't care whether you believe it at this point."

The door swung open wide just as Michonne reached to knock on it and she was confronted with Shane's reddened, angry face. She'd noticed recently, since he decided to let the hair on his head and face grow out, as it was right now, Shane resembled one of her favorite comic book characters. But, she was forced to acknowledge, the look wasn't quite as charming in the flesh as it was drawn in a book. He looked scary and ferocious, with bushy sideburns that lined his cheeks and trailed along his jawline to his goatee. She found it unnerving. Shane had been many things in the years she'd known him, exasperating, annoying, bothersome, immature, petulant, sometimes humorous, occasionally entertaining, rarely charming, but never until now, frightening.

"Didja hear enough, or would you like me to close the door so you can eavesdrop summore?" Shane spat at her. Like Rick, Shane's Georgian accent got thicker when he was angry. So he must have been fuming right then.

"I just got here, Fra-, I mean, Shane," Michonne spoke softly and caught herself before she made a bad moment worse.

He raised a bushy eyebrow at her slip. Nicknames were all well and good when you were on good terms. This was not that moment.

"Well, I guess you should go help your friend, then," Shane said switching places with her at the door, him now on the outside and her on the in. "'Cuz, _I swear to God,_ she is losin' it."

"Get out!" Maggie shouted, stunning Michonne.

None of the Greenes were known for raising their voices. Hershel was probably the softest spoken man Michonne had ever met in her life. But Maggie was also not one for histrionics either. This thing with Ariane was taking over her life.

"Maggie!" Michonne scolded.

"Don't worry about it, 'Chonne. I'm leavin'," Shane said deflating from the puffed up, fierce beast he looked like when he opened the door.

Looking at him closely, he looked haggard and rundown. The hair and beard a little less of a fashion statement and a little more a statement on how much care he hadn't been taking of himself lately. Everyone was on edge, everything was going wrong. The fragile equilibrium that existed there at the Mission had been thrown off kilter. Michonne would never have imagined that everything around her, the emotions, relationships, lives dangled on such a slender thread. Or that she would have had the power within her to damage it.

"Shane, I know things are hard right now but..." Michonne put a hand on his arm, stopping him briefly as he was about to head down the hallway. She took a deep breath and gave him an understanding smile, while keeping her tone solemnly serious. "...You and Rick both need shaves and haircuts."

Shane looked confused for a moment before he understood what she was doing and cracked a smile, which is what she was hoping for. Michonne rooted around in her purse until she found a Franc note and waved it at him. "My treat."

"Oh, it's like that?" He said stroking his furry chin exaggeratedly as he backed away.

"Yeah, it's _exactly_ like that." She smiled fanning herself with the large note and a couple others she'd fished out of her purse as well. "Ya'll look like _Lippy the Lion_ and _Hardy Har Har_ right now. Have some pride in your appearance, for God's Sake."

Shane broke into a full belly laugh.

He shook his head at her, turning to walk away. "Alright, Pretty Lady, I'll see you around."

Michonne turned then to find Maggie glaring at her from the living room, a few feet away.

"Are you kidding me?" Maggie said flabbergasted. "What was that?"

"Are you trying to ruin your relationship with him?" Michonne couldn't believe there would ever be a moment when she was advocating on behalf of Shane Walsh with one of her friends, but she knew Maggie loved him.

She walked into the living room and took Maggie by the hands, sitting them both down on the small couch.

"Maggie, you gotta cut him some slack. You gotta cut everybody some slack. Including yourself." Michonne squeezed her hands for emphasis.

"No one knows where the Saviors compound is. Shane isn't keeping the information from you. It's a well-guarded secret."

"I heard it was in Goma," Maggie insisted. She got up then and ran into the bedroom at the back of the apartment.

"They say it's a lot of places."

"They say that it's on the outskirts right outside the city," She called animatedly from her room, having not heard Michonne's response.

She ran back into the living room with a large map that she spread across her coffee table in front of Michonne.

"Well, I've heard them say it's somewhere up in the mountains. Up in Mitumba range, it's a cloud village near Lake Kivu. The ladies in my hair salon believe it's not in the DRC at all but in Rwanda. Makemba told me she heard it was in Uganda." Michonne watched as Maggie ran a hand through her stringy brown hair, wondering if the young woman was hearing her at all. There were bags under her eyes and their usual vibrant green color was, if possible, dull and murky.

"Maggie, the reason Negan is as powerful as he is is because he's able to work like this. In shadow, where no one can touch him, where no one would dare give up his secrets. This is not a game. No one in their right mind is going to inform on him."

Michonne felt like she was doing the delicate work of talking her friend off a ledge. Looking at her now, she realized she had never seen Maggie like this. She clearly wasn't eating, the clothes hung on her frame. She looked like she hadn't slept in days, her cheeks were hollow, her complexion, sallow. Her hair was unwashed. Stavros had given them each a week off. A "gentle suspension" was what Rick had called it, in an increasingly rare effort to comfort Michonne. But even after the time was up Maggie had still not returned to work.

It was Michonne's growing concern that Maggie was going to do something rash that had precipitated this visit. Though she'd seen Maggie once or twice when they were both paying a visit to Kevin as he convalesced, otherwise she had been scarce. Now, Michonne really grasped that she had been doing with all that time, she looked down at Maggie's map with concern.

"Can I have something to drink please?"

Maggie looked up from the paper absently and nodded, rising to go fetch it from the kitchen.

When she stepped away, Michonne got on her knees quickly and poured over the map looking at the x's and circles, red marks and slashes. Maggie had made a grid over the entire eastern border of the country and like a methodical game of tic-tac-toe, she was crossing off and circling areas. So far all her x's were still along the USAfriCOM border, roughly, though not completely within-bounds. Still, it was frightening to see.

Maggie returned with a cold glass, handing it to her. "Maggie, how have you been able to do this? Have you been going to these places while you're not at work?"

She looked at Michonne as if debating whether to speak or not. "Shane and I have," she admitted.

Michonne felt her blood begin to boil. Just when she was beginning to feel bad for him, he does something that made her want to kick his teeth in. _Typical_. "Is he taking you out of bounds?"

Maggie's face darkened. "No, I've asked him to…"

Michonne breathed a sigh of relief pulling back on some of the choice things she had planned to say to him when they met again.

"...But he won't. We just meet up with his people along the border and we exchange information."

"His people?" Michonne scoffed.

He was laying it on a little thick to impress Maggie. Yeah, Rick and a lot of the other Protection guys paid informants a little here and there to know what was happening on the other side of the border, but it was hardly a spy-ring. Michonne rolled her eyes. It was bad enough he was taking her all over the countryside on a wild goose chase.

"Well, you know Shane has a side business selling things, stuff they can't get easily over in the Eastern."

Although obviously forbidden, Michonne had heard a rumor like that once. Guys making a couple extra bucks to supplement their income, selling surplus off the back of a truck. Someone had done it at nearly every mission she'd worked at, she was hardly shocked or surprised. Here though, she hadn't heard it was Shane, but a couple of young guys from the Protection Unit, in league with a few guys from AfriCOM that could get you a good bottle of whiskey, or a nice red if you needed it for a party, or some good Belgian chocolate to satisfy that sweet-tooth or french cigarettes when—

 _Oh God._

"Mich? Are you okay?" Maggie asked looking at her with concern. "Please don't let Shane know I told you."

Michonne looked at her and shook her head unable to speak. Surely, she was mistaken. This was not possible. _Not Shane, not Rick._

"He's paranoid about Rick finding out and he's convinced you would tell him if you knew. But you won't, though right?" Maggie pleaded, answering her unspoken question.

Michonne shook her head. She wouldn't even know where to begin to start. Everybody knew the story, Rick and Shane had known each other since childhood, followed each other around the globe faithfully like puppies. Michonne had no guarantee that even if she were to speak up that Rick would believe her anyway. She could hardly believe it herself. _If it was true_. Right now, it was pure conjecture. And she had no proof, something she'd definitely need to speak to Rick, or really anyone else for that matter. All she had right now was Maggie, who was rapidly coming unhinged and seemingly had no clue what she actually knew.

The thought of it, though, made her blood run cold. She just couldn't believe it. It didn't make any sense. For all the animosity between her and Shane, most of it coming from her direction she admitted, she'd never thought of him as a bad guy. He irritated her, sure but ultimately she'd trusted him with her life before and he'd never given her one reason to doubt. Plus, Rick trusted him and that was the ultimate seal of approval as far as Michonne was concerned.

 _No, this couldn't be true...it just couldn't_.

Because if he was truly in league with DaDa Ngangabouka, Shane Walsh wasn't just a bad guy, he was _dangerous_.

* * *

Rick watched his beer sweat slowly on the bar.

Individual drops of condensation slipped down the bottle onto the cardboard coaster at the base. He and Shane were sitting belly-up to the bar at the local watering hole, supposedly enjoying a Hawks game they'd paid the owner a couple dollars to watch via satellite. But Rick couldn't keep track of what was going on, his mind kept wandering and it looked like they were losing to the Celtics anyway.

"Ground Control to Major Tom, come in Major Tom."

Rick looked up and saw Shane watching him intently. "What?"

"Man, I'm pouring out my heart to you, tellin' you my woman troubles and you're the one that looks ready to play the Hank Williams."

"I'm sorry man, what were you saying?"

Shane chuckled, seemingly at him.

"I was saying, you need to call her."

"Call who?" Rick looked over at Shane with confusion. He really wasn't following the plot now. "Who are we talking about?"

"Michonne. You need to call her," Shane said turning in the bar stool to face Rick. "Man, I've got my own shit, I cannot watch you being a sad sack day after day."

Rick opened his mouth to object when Shane raised his hand. "Rick, you know I love Lori like my own sister. I mean like, she _is_ my sister, basically. But I have never seen your whole mood for the day hang on what kind of conversation you had with her in the morning."

"What are you saying?" Rick asked, truly confused that her name was suddenly coming up.

 _Michonne._

She was who he was trying not to think about, out having beers with Shane in the first place. Now, here Shane was bringing her up again! The whole incident last month had shown Rick he really didn't have the relationship with her that he thought he did. But after weeks of giving her space and himself some too, he felt more like he was the one being punished. That just didn't make any sense to him, but he refused to cave.

Shane shook his head and chuckled to himself again, definitely Rick understood then, at his expense.

"Nothin' man. Not a thing." He slapped Rick on the shoulder. "I was talking about reprioritizing my life."

"Big word for you. _Reprioritize_. You got enough dimes to afford it?"

"You know what, Rick? _Fuck you._ I got a lot more dimes than you realize," Shane muttered as he picked up his beer bottle by the neck and sipped it, sulking.

"I'm kidding. I'm just kidding. So you're reprioritizing. What's the plan?"

Rick saw Shane look him up and down deciding whether or not to share.

"C'mon," Rick said impatiently. "I'm in no mood to beg."

"Well," Shane spun back around on his bar stool and leaned into Rick's shoulder. "Maggie's daddy has this horse ranch. Not too far from King County actually. It's been in their family for, like, generations. The old man was supposed to take it over from his daddy but you know what happened with that."

Rick nodded. In fact, he did...and better than Shane most likely.

"So I'm thinking I might buy it from him. Go out, get the biggest diamond I can find —conflict-free, of course— and ask Maggie to marry me."

Rick put down his drink that he'd just picked up to look at Shane. The idiot was grinning ear to ear with excitement. "Are you serious?"

"As cancer, man," Shane said nodding. "I'm just thinking it's time to get out while the getting's good."

"Shane…" Rick began.

"Look, Rick man, you live for this shit. I never did. It's a good living, doing good work but I've never been a true believer like you."

Rick was struck, that was almost like a dirty word between the two of them. He was shocked to hear them now attached to him; they'd always seemed a bit of a curse. What they liked to call the gullible newbies who really thought they were actually changing the world, before reality beat them down. He never once thought of himself that way. Rick had even imagined himself a little less charitably, like more of a mercenary. So it was strange to hear those words leveled at him, like an accusation.

He'd fallen into this business as a young man. Freshly commissioned, he'd been assigned a brief duty, assisting the local city police in protecting some UN VIPs, down in Atlanta for a few days, with some of his Marine unit. Little did Rick know that one VIP's wife would take a special liking to him as a local boy and encourage her husband to offer him a job. Hershel Greene had obeyed his wife then and brought Rick into the fold —and the rest was so-called history. It was still hard for him to believe that had been over ten years ago.

"So, you're sayin' you're leavin'?" Rick asked still trying to grasp the information.

Shane took another swig of his beer. "Seriously thinkin' 'bout it."

"Walsh, you realize Maggie has the UN in her blood, right?"

"I was hoping a little Shane Jr. might make her think otherwise."

"Is Maggie pregnant?" Rick asked startled. He knew her father would have a stroke and then demand that Rick shoot his best friend as a personal favor.

"No, of course not! At least, I don't think so, although seeing how moody she's been lately….But neither of us is being particularly careful, if you get what I'm saying. Right now, it's a matter of when not if."

"Ugh. Geezus man, I already told you. I've known that girl since she was in short clothes, can you not?" Rick gave him a grimace.

"Sorry, sorry." Shane cringed apologetically. "Listen, my point is, I think we're on the same page, me and her. And I'm just acceleratin' the timeline a bit, that's all. I'm done here."

Shane sighed, his face taking on a more serious expression than Rick had seen in a very long time.

"I've done all I can do here. The writing's on the wall. It's past time."

Rick tried to ignore all the unfortunate clichés packed into one sentence as he looked down on his beer again. It wasn't sweating anymore. It was getting warm.

"So, when you puttin' in your paperwork?"

"I have the _Notification of Final Departure_ form sitting on my desk in the office."

"Christ, how long have you been thinking about this, Shane?" Rick was trying hard not to take this personally.

"Rick, relax man. You and I are still gonna be best friends," Shane said reassuringly as if he could read Rick's mind. "But I've been thinking about it for a while. It's just that with all the shit going on… it's starting to feel like the right time now."

He lowered his voice so only Rick could hear him in the din of the surrounding bar. "And with this crazy internal audit stuff…"

Rick hated that whole thing. After Michonne's statement to Stavros and Matt, things had kicked into high gear. Even though Michonne was certain it was malfeasance within the USAfriCOM offices, they'd been forced to cast a wide net. The UN couldn't accuse the US government of misconduct without making for damn sure their house was clean too. Of course, Rick was too close to it all to be considered impartial or even above suspicion. But he also couldn't, by law, tell Shane what the audit was really about or reassure him that it wasn't anything he would have to worry about getting swept up in. He was caught between a true rock and a hard place.

"This whole thing is gonna blow over, just wait and see."

"Thing is, buddy, I don't want to wait. I want out. _Now_ ," Shane said, finishing the last of his beer and flagging down the bartender for another. "I got my nest egg. I got my girl and I got a whole lotta life I wanna live while I'm still young enough to enjoy it."

Shane smiled that shit-eating grin he favored when he was feeling particularly smug.

"So _Maggie_?"

"That girl keeps me on my toes. I never know whether I'm coming or going with her."

"That's a good thing?" To Rick, it sounded exhausting.

"That's the _best_ thing, Man! Ooo-wee, keeps you honest, keeps you tryin' to please 'em, keeps you trying to be your best self to even _hope_ to deserve 'em."

"And _that's_ a good thing?"

"I don't know Rick, is it?" Shane asked shortly, mildly peeved at the question.

Rick shrugged. "I don't know. Lori and I don't have that kind of relationship."

"Yeah, _I know_ ," Shane said simply, taking another sip from his bottle and looking up at the game intently.

"So, a nest egg, huh?" Rick said after a few minutes of silence, spent nursing his drink.

"Yep."

"Lined with what, chicken feathers?" Rick teased, taking a pull from his beer. UN salaries were good and globally competitive but not 'buying a whole horse ranch' good.

"Try goose down, brother," Shane said seriously.

Rick looked at him with curiosity.

"Man, why the hell do you think I've bunked up with you and lived like a poor relation for nearly 8 years on the road? And then livin' in my grandma's house when I'm in the States? It's so I could save up my money, bro."

Shane laughed, elbowing Rick, who just shook his head.

The bartender came then, putting down Rick's second beer and Shane's fourth. Shane pushed the lime in and turned the bottle upside down with his thumb stuck inside to hold the seal. Rick watched Shane as he watched the wedge lazily drift up toward the top of the upturned bottle. Shane's tongue stuck out the corner of his mouth as if in concentration. Rick couldn't help but smile. It was the exact same way Shane looked when they did it at fourteen, sitting on his grandmother's back gallery sneaking beers.

Rick realized in that moment, Shane had been his partner for so long he honestly didn't know what he'd do without him. For a long time growing up, they had done everything together, until Rick met Lori and they eventually married. But instead of growing apart, he, Shane and Lori became like the Three Musketeers. They were all so young, it had been like Lori got two husbands for the price of one. Rick knew Shane could always be relied upon in King County to make sure his family was taken care of. In turn, Shane knew he never had to worry about his grandmother being alone with Lori there. Carl grew up thinking of the old woman as a fifth grandparent. And though they didn't join the UN together, since Shane stayed in the Corps two years longer — the longest time they were ever separated in their adult lives— where one went, the other was sure to soon follow.

 _Maybe this didn't have to mean things were changing that much at all?_

Hadn't Rick just recently been thinking of handing in his papers himself? Maybe the writing was on the wall, Rick realized suddenly. If Shane was going home to start his own family, it wouldn't be fair to ask him to continue to keep an eye on Rick's. That was Rick's job, his responsibility. Lori and Carl would certainly not be sad to hear the news that Rick was coming home for good. Someone always took the lead in these decisions, what Mission to go to next, whether to re-up in the Corps. Usually it was Rick, and Shane just followed, but maybe it was time to let Shane take the lead for a minute?

 _Maybe Michonne had been right. They_ were _Frick and Frack,_ _why fight it?_

And if Frack was finally leaving the UN for good, maybe it was high time that 'Rick got the message too?


	16. Chapter 16

7/27/15 02:35 EET

Incirlik AFB, Adana Turkey

Michonne gripped the back of Tobin's seat while Milton sat buckled into the jumpseat behind her.

"Michonne, just what in the hell do you guys think you're doin'?" Rick's voice, hard and urgent, came over the radio.

She put the walkie-talkie to her mouth and took a breath before speaking.

"We're clearing a path for you."

"Usin' yourself as bait?"

"Using the plane as bait," She spoke confidently although she recognized if it worked, she had no idea how they would get out. "Right now you're trapped in that building. But we have an idea."

There was a moment of static, in which she imagined that Rick had possibly thrown their only means of communication on the floor, smashing it.

"Rick?"

"Let's hear it." His voice was deadly calm. Also not a good sign.

"Tobin said if they'd already managed to gas up the refueling plane then we can still use it. Refueling jets can siphon their storage supply as needed in an emergency too. We'd have access to all the fuel on that plane to go anywhere we needed to."

There was another extended silence filled with static. Michonne had to acknowledge that was a pretty brilliant save by Capt. Douglas, just when she had begun to think he might not be good for anything but a diversion while she got Dr. Mamet off the plane. _Ugh. She sounded_ _cynical_ _like Rick._ She hated that. Tobin was with them, and quite possibly he was about to save the day.

"They say it's fully gassed up," Rick replied shortly.

Michonne breathed a heavy sigh of relief. _So it hadn't been just a crazy idea._ She looked out the window and saw how the propellers cut through the crowd, mowing the heads off some of the creatures as they swarmed.

"So once you lead them away, how do you plan to get off?" Michonne could tell just from his tone that Rick was speaking through gritted teeth.

"I, I haven't gotten that far yet," Michonne admitted. Tobin looked up at her alarmed and she put a reassuring hand on his shoulder shaking her head.

"Just drive. I've got it," She whispered to him confidently.

"You realize you can't fly anywhere in that plane?" Rick answered at the same time.

Michonne turned to look at Milton recognizing he might need reassurance after that statement too. She saw the man hung on her every word. She had to come up with something _now_.

"I can't fly anywhere _far_ ," She said suddenly, an idea coming to her.

"That's right? Right?" She asked Tobin.

He thought for a minute before nodding. "I mean, we're running on fumes as it is. All the holding we did before we landed cut into any excess we might have had. But yeah. I could probably get this tin can back up in the air for a few minutes. Why?"

"Okay Milton, get the maps out. We need, how much room do you need to land this?"

"You saw last time, I need at least 700 feet."

"Okay Milton, get me 700 feet of straight road."

Milton unbuckled himself and started to search the flight papers for what she had requested.

Michonne looked out to make sure the majority of the things on the tarmac were following their plane. She took a deep breath and pressed the button on the walkie. "Rick? Here's the plan…."

* * *

02:44 EET

"Your girlfriend there really is one brave little soldier. Who is she?" Jesus asked as he pulled together his rucksack of ammunition, etc.

The whole room was a flurry of activity as they prepared for departure. As would only make sense, the three newbies agreed to join Rick and his group. There was nothing to stay here for anyway. The base was lost.

Rick glared at him but said nothing, tossing a few sodas and chips Glenn had gotten him into his pack for Michonne and the others.

"Where's the plane again?" Rick asked.

"On supplemental runway 2, behind the hospital. That's where the planes carrying any casualities used to come in so we could get them directly into triage," Sasha answered, checking the magazine of her rifle before slapping it back into place.

"It was the only runway we were able to clear, since it's bounded on three sides by a fence and we could close the gate from the main taxiway. We decided to put your plane there and await further instructions," Jesus explained.

"Meaning Michonne might be leading those things away for nothing." Rick observed.

"Hey! My people died getting that fence closed for you," Rosita growled resentfully, forcing something into her rucksack.

"Sgt. Espinosa's just saying it took a lot of work to get that space cleared out and we still don't even know why we were doing it," Sasha said more diplomatically.

Carol looked at Daryl, who looked at Rick. A question and answer moving between them silently.

"Let's just all get on the plane and we'll see what we can sort out then?" Glenn surprised everyone by announcing from where he stood at the side.

They continued readying themselves in silence. Sasha, Jesus and Rosita huddled together for a while conferring. Rick watched but said nothing assuming they'd enlighten him at some point.

"Okay, so the bad news—" Jesus announced finally.

"So, there's more bad news? Wait, and there was good news before? Did I miss it?" Carol tittered incredulously looking at Jesus.

"Noted." He took a beat. "Well, the _news_ is, we locked the gate up tight. But the guy, Mitchell, that had the keys and the security codes is...well, he's wandering around out there somewhere."

"So what does that mean? We scalin' the fence?" Rick asked.

"Scal-, ha, no, no. It's razor-sharp, steel reinforced barbed wire, nope," Jesus said chuckling. "We have to go through the hospital."

"The one where 'Zeke is in full residence'?" Glenn clarified, repeating Rosita's words from earlier.

"That would be the one." Jesus made clicking noises with his tongue, firing his finger like a pistol at Glenn.

Rick's group all looked at each other. _A minute ago, Michonne's plan sounded like fucking insanity and now it turned out she had the safer bet of the two missions._

"Okay look, I used to work in there. I know the building. We only have to get across the sky bridge undetected, down the hallway to the left and into the stairwell. We can easily get down and out of the building through the kitchens. It would normally be short staffed at this time of night anyway. It should be completely empty."

"So only that then?" Daryl said, his gravelly voice dripping with sarcasm.

Sasha sighed heavily. "Look man, I'm doing my best."

"And we thank you for that, Sergeant. Since you know your way around, you are gonna take point. Jesus, you're our coverage." Rick pointed at him and he nodded. "Carol, you're the only one that can fly that thing right now so you're in the middle. Rosita, Glenn, you're with her. Her safety is your priority, clear? Dixon, you and me we're bringing up the rear. Everybody got it?"

They all nodded.

"We're gonna keep this nice and tight and quiet." Rick looked over at Jesus as he opened his mouth to speak. "I will knock your block off if anything stupid comes out of your mouth right now."

Jesus feigned surprise, "Captain please, I'm a lot of things. Crude isn't one of them."

Daryl grumbled unintelligibly as he hauled his sack up onto his back.

"I was just gonna ask Carol if she was sure such a little lady can handle such a big plane."

"Oh sweetie, I'm a Marine Aviator. I can fly anything with wings but a chicken. If you had wings, sunshine... I could fly _you_ ," Carol said deliberately brushing past him to walk away. Daryl followed closely behind and gave him a hard knock with his shoulder.

"Welp, and there you go!" Sasha said exchanging a rare smile with Rosita.

"She _certainly_ told you," Rosita added, giving him a long appraising look from his head to his feet and back before heading after them.

Jesus surprised Rick by turning bright red. Rick suppressed a smile himself as he followed the women quietly down the stairs.

* * *

02:50 EET

Michonne held her breath. It was all decided and the place where they were going to land, chosen. There was nothing left for them now but to do it.

"Milton? Dr. Mamet, are you okay?" She asked when he seemed far away. A minute before he'd been intent, seemingly, on every breath she took and now he was daydreaming. "Milton."

He looked at her suddenly his face awash with apprehension. He nodded finally when he understood what had been asked.

"You ready, Captain?"

"As I'm ever gonna be." Tobin lifted his hand off the throttle to show her it was steady.

"Okay, let's do this." Michonne held her breath.

 _The plan was simple._

They were only going to fly the plane from the base across the city of Adana to a lonely stretch of highway immediately on the opposite side, into what Jesus had assured them was the fairly quiet _Levant_ district. At the most, they calculated, it was to be a journey of roughly five miles in total. A distance the fuel stores could handle while also giving them sufficient time and distance from populated areas to make a quick transfer. Still, Tobin had explained, it was going to take some pretty fancy flying from both him and Carol to make it work. The effort would require timed and precise coordination between the two groups in a circumstance where a lot of variables were complete unknowns.

As far as they knew, _Sümbül Caddesi_ or Hyacinth Street was a miles-long, narrow, only partially-paved but entirely uninterrupted roadway that flowed alongside a river. And while that was good because it decreased the number of sides from which they could be attacked, it also meant slight winds along the road and very little margin of error, in a place where they ideally needed a straight shot and a lot of room to maneuver. Still, Michonne and Tobin picked what looked like the straightest part of the long road and declared it their rendezvous point.

Michonne strapped into the co-pilot's seat and held on.

After twenty minutes of leading a mass of the infected down the primrose path and all over the available runway space, Tobin turned slowly to face in the direction that he'd cleared. Taxiing slowly at first, he sheared off the heads of the most belligerent followers in his way. The blood and gore splattered a fine mist on the windscreen. Tobin turned to her and casually flicked on the windshield wipers with a smile like they were in his daddy's old Cadillac, then he pulled away, picking up speed. The road was bumpy. Michonne realized morbidly, they were probably running over a few bodies but they didn't stop. She felt as the forward momentum pushed her back in her seat. She hung over her armrest, quickly looking over her shoulder at Milton. He sat in the jumpseat behind her with his eyes closed, speaking quietly to himself.

"Doctor?" Michonne shouted over the increasingly labored engine noise. "Doctor."

Milton opened his eyes suddenly, squinting as if afraid to look. Michonne realized in that moment that though he had an appealingly young look about him, they were probably about the same age. So at least she wasn't about to lie to a child, she comforted herself.

"Dr. Mamet, relax, this is a puddle jump. We're going to be fine," She said turning back to face the window just as she felt the front wheel lift off.

 _Oh God,_ she prayed, _let us be fine._

The back wheels left the ground and they soared upward.

Michonne and Tobin exchanged a smile while the plane climbed. The plane trembled violently as it was making its ascent. An alarm went off on the control panel, blinking an angry red color. Though she didn't say anything, she guessed, Tobin could still tell that she was alarmed before he spoke.

"We can't climb too high," He explained calmly. "We're too close so we're gonna have to deal with some windshear. That's all that little light is telling me. We're still good."

Michonne nodded. She ventured a peek out the windows and saw Adana below her. Even in its devastation, it made her think San Antonio, with its beautiful rivers that wound right through its heart. It was a pretty city, the parts she could still see, by the lights of fires burning or smoldering in pockets. She thought then of the vacation she'd taken to Texas with Mike.

He was a big history buff and had been dying to see the Alamo. She, however, had fallen in love with San Antonio's River Walk. It had been there, amongst the restaurants, shops, boats and canals, that she had decided to throw caution and a niggling doubt to the wind and if he asked, accept his marriage proposal. Michonne couldn't believe that was already two years ago. She reached for the engagement ring now hanging from the necklace around her throat. She'd put it there yesterday morning after she'd spoken to Rick and Hersh on the phone. Now, she wondered what that meant….

There was a sudden jerk and a drop that pulled Michonne back to harsh reality. She felt like her stomach had leapt into her throat without warning. She was certain she heard Milton groan behind her.

"Everything okay, Captain?"

She looked over into Tobin's face. It was a mask of nonchalance.

"Yep."

"What's up?" She insisted.

"The engine is stalling out on me. We're too low, we have to climb a little more." He said simply but the worry was creeping into his features.

"I thought you said we were too close to climb?"

"Yeah but I'm getting a lot of resistance this low. We're burning through the little fuel we have, if we wanna make it, I gotta get higher."

Michonne braced the armrest as he ascended steeply.

"It's fine. We'll go a little past the spot and then double back. Approach from the east, that's the direction the prevailing winds are coming from anyway." Michonne wasn't sure Tobin was speaking to her at that moment or himself.

Another alarm on his instrument panel blinked at them. Michonne closed her eyes and leaned her head against the rest, willing the plane to stay aloft.

"We're still stalling out. I think we've officially run out of gas."

Michonne's eyes popped open in time to see the right front propeller slowing to a stop.

 _Oh God._

"We're still okay. We're still okay," Tobin said, definitely to himself this time. "I'm not a glider but I can get this big bitch back on the ground. Trust me."

He looked at her quickly before driving the yoke forward slowly, angling the nose downward.

Michonne didn't mean to but she screamed, the sound more resembling Milton's moan before than anything.

"I know it looks wrong but I gotta pick up speed to make sure we don't crash," He said loudly over the increasing urgent alerts coming from his instrumentation panel.

Michonne closed her eyes again and felt the plane speed up and then bank left.

"It's there." He said of the small road, as he pointed.

She looked hesitantly, afraid to open her eyes completely.

The only thing that delineated it, just barely, from pure darkness and the river right beside it was a string of street lights that lined one side of the road like Christmas tinsel. The entire cabin shook violently as the plane bobbed up and down, like they were indeed gliding on the winds like a paper plane.

"Easy," Tobin coaxed as they just barely rose above the tall tree-tops of the cypress lining the other side of the road. "Easy."

Michonne felt like she could breathe again, with the ground only about 100 feet below them. _He was actually gonna do it._ Tobin was about set them down intact.

"I think we're okay, Dr. Mamet," She said smiling and turning to look at the nervous man. But his eyes were still looking out the window. Widening with horror.

"Oh crap. Brace-" Was all Tobin was able to say before a lonely radio mast antenna appeared seemingly out of nowhere and clipped the entire left wing, shearing off the propellers, one of which flew directly into the cockpit. The entire plane spun left as if knocked off course by the hand of a giant child.

Electricity sparkled dazzlingly as the entire instrument panel ignited in front of them. Glass and metal flew everywhere as Tobin coughed up both the contents of his stomach and what looked like gallons of blood.

Michonne pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped her hands around them and buried her face in between, just as the icy dark waters of the river rushed up to meet her.


	17. Chapter 17

April 2011

Kyangwali Refugee Camp, Uganda

Michonne walked between the rows of makeshift dirty water grey tenting.

There was absolutely nothing to recommend a refugee camp. From afar, the tented cities always called to Michonne's mind row after row of orderly and indistinguishable warehouse shelving. To her, it was eerily similar to the famous final scene in _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ , when the sacred Ark of the Covenant gets anonymously filed away, lost to the ages amongst American bric-a-brac and bureaucracy. Michonne couldn't help but wonder frequently what other treasures, of the human variety, were lost in these identical grey tents. Despite that, it still managed to amaze her that the populace made their meager accommodations their own. How the inside of every tent was uniquely its inhabitants' own and how, if you visited often enough, you began to recognize one fairly easily from another.

She had only been in Uganda for four days and she'd already begun recognizing when she turned an aisle too soon for the infirmary or taken the wrong left or right to visit a particular family. It helped also that she had an excellent sense of direction, her North and East always revealing themselves to her readily. It was something Michonne had discovered young as a little brownie scout in Georgia and found still served her well. So she realized quickly when she'd done that now, taken a left too soon and found herself surrounded by unfamiliar tents.

Michonne took a deep breath and looked around.

It wouldn't be terrible finding her way back but she realized she might as well make use of her little error. If some of the people along this corridor were willing to talk to her, tell her their stories, this "mistake" would have benefit. She walked purposefully over to the first woman she saw, who sat milling grains with a rudimentary mortar and pestle made of stones…

...

 _"Kwaheri, mpenzi wangu_ ," The older woman said hours later in Swahili, waving good-bye to Michonne after her visit.

*Good-bye Auntie* She replied, using up the last of her elementary-school Swahili as she walked away.

Michonne checked her watch. It was after six and she knew Rick and Samir would be looking for her. She hadn't meant to stay with the woman, Lady, for so long, but as her name suggested she had been a real character filled with more wonderful stories of her small village before the war than the horrors after. Occasionally, it was nice to just sit and listen to those type of testimonials for a change.

Still, in the dimness of twilight, making her way back was gonna be a bit harder. She pulled out her cell. It never failed to impress her that she could get a signal out in the middle of absolutely nowhere when sometimes she used to drop calls right on Peachtree and North in the heart of Atlanta. She texted Rick quickly to let him know she was on her way back.

*Daughter?* A small voice called out to her as she wandered down the aisle trying to get her bearings.

"Is that you?" The voice continued softly in heavily-accented English. Michonne looked around realizing she recognized the voice.

Sitting in a damaged lawn-chair missing the right armrest was one of the old sisters she'd met in Ariane's village. The woman looked smaller and frailer now, her shock of silver white hair free from the fabric it had been neatly wrapped in before. Michonne moved to her quickly, bending down to greet her when they were close enough.

"Mother?" She said respectfully. "What are you doing here?"

Michonne spoke the question reflexively before realizing the only reason she would be meeting the old woman in a refugee camp over 300 kilometers from her home. "What happened?"

The old woman smiled a gummy, weary smile and patted the hand Michonne offered her consolingly as if Michonne had been the one to endure the hardship recently.

Without her having said a word yet, Michonne could already feel her heart breaking.

"DaDa's man came back a few days later asking about you."

Bile churned in Michonne's stomach. _Why hadn't she thought of that? Why hadn't she considered the potential blowback on the villagers?_

"What did you tell him?"

Surprisingly, the old woman laughed. "I am an old woman, what could I tell I them?"

Michonne was afraid to ask. "What did they do to you?"

"Well," the woman said diplomatically. "Nothing really."

Michonne was confused and the woman read it on her face.

"...But not everyone is as old as I. Those that weren't burned out, were beaten until he believed that we really knew nothing about you."

Michonne knelt in front of the woman, tears filling her eyes. This was what she had wrought, her and her 'clever' lies.

The old woman put her hand on the top of Michonne's bowed head gently. "It was not your fault, my dear. Not Ariane's either. It was his. DaDa punished him horribly for burning down Miriam's house. So he was angry and he took it out on us. By the time he was finished, there was nothing left. "

Michonne shook her head refusing to be absolved. This was definitely her doing. She looked around then.

"Where is your sister?" she asked.

"My sister?" The old woman cackled happily. "She would have loved that. My _mother_ , dear."

Michonne looked at her wide-eyed. Both women had looked ancient and identical but neither one appeared any older than the other. Guilty tears streamed down her face freely.

"She was an old woman. Far too old to make this journey. People were very kind and helped us most of the way, but it was too much."

"So you're here by yourself?" Michonne looked around. She didn't know what she could do about that but she was sure in that moment that she'd try.

"Oh no," She patted Michonne's cheek comfortingly. "My niece and her family lived two houses away in the village. It is just her and the children now. They took her older son and husband away with them, so we stay together now.

Michonne rose to her feet. "I'm so sorry."

She wished there was more she could do or say. She would definitely find a way to help this woman and her family.

"You keep apologizing but it was not your fault. Our village has been marked since DaDa met Miriam and her husband Marc years ago."

Michonne was confused. "He knows them? Then why did he take Ariane and her brother?"

"To punish Marc. This is how he works. He does not always punish you. He will punish those around you until you break. He will make an example of you and your heartbreak will be his victory and your tears his libation."

A chill ran through the entirety of Michonne's body.

"What is your name, child?" The woman asked then.

"Michonne," she answered honestly. "I'm a UN investigator in Kisangani."

"Ahh, so you are a good woman, then. I thought so," She observed. "I am Nyokato Mongala."

Michonne nodded to her.

"Be careful, Michonne. DaDa knows about you now. And that pretty girl you were with. He won't forget that you helped his man cheat him of vengeance."

"Vengeance?"

" _Oh yes._ Marc lived long enough to see Miriam and his children brought low. But Miriam will now not live to see what happens to her children. DaDa will not be pleased with that. Not at all."

Considering what a notorious warlord DaDa was that seemed ludicrously petty. Laughable even. The warning that should have inspired fear, instead just stoked an anger in the pit of Michonne's stomach.

"There you are." Rick's voice came from behind her. She turned to see him walking down the corridor of tents toward her. "I thought you said you were on your way back."

"I know. I'm sorry."

Michonne introduced Rick to Nyokato. He tried to ply her with his typical charm-offensive but the old woman just watched him wearily. Michonne found it strange. Rick's countrified gentleman schtick usually worked on all women, but particularly the old, across cultures. Even Michonne had a hard time not falling completely under his sway when he broke out the "yes, ma'am's" and that all-around charming Southern devil. She found herself secretly thanking God that he was far less practiced and far more sparing with it than Shane was.

After a couple awkward minutes of that, she grabbed Rick's arm and pulled him aside. "I want to talk with her a few minutes more and I'm not sure she's comfortable around you," Michonne admitted to him as delicately as she could.

Rick nodded understandingly. "Alright. I'll give you ten more minutes and then we have to go."

Michonne agreed appreciatively then watched him as he walked away. She saw Nyokato did the same thing.

"You know him?" The woman asked suspiciously once she was sure he was gone.

"Yes," Michonne answered, curious.

 _Why was she asking? Why had her mood changed so rapidly upon meeting Rick?_

"Well?" The old woman queried, unconvinced.

"I think so, for many years. Why?" Michonne was stunned at how much of Nyokato's disapproval of him came out in such few words. One would have thought they knew each other and there was bad blood between them.

"When I used to go to the market with the women of my village we would sometimes see DaDa's men there. Then we would see a white man," she said the words with a surprising degree of distaste. "Like your friend there, meeting with them."

"A peacekeeper?" It was highly unorthodox but possible that some UN staff or USAfriCOM officers could deal directly with Ngangabouka's men secretly as informants or go betweens.

"No," The woman shook her head angrily. "He sounded like _him_."

Nyokato's milky gaze ventured down the way Rick had gone, her chin jutting in the same direction.

"Like him? What, his accent?"

The old woman gave a decisive nod. " _Oh thank you, ma'am_ , _such a pleasure, honey_ …"

Michonne had to briefly stifle a snort at Nyokato's bastardized and very poor African rendition of a Southern accent. If time wasn't of the essence in her visits to the camps, she would have happily spent days sitting at this woman's knee and soaking up all the wisdom she chose to impart.

"Well, I assure you, Rick is a good man," Michonne said smiling and following Nyokato in looking off in the direction he'd gone.

 _Probably the best man she'd ever known or would ever know._ She thought wistfully for a moment before looking back down at the old woman again.

To her surprise, yet again, Nyokato's expression had changed dramatically. She smiled up at Michonne, her toothless gums on full display endearingly. Despite her advancing age, the old woman was as painfully cute as a toddler.

"What?" Michonne asked, feeling suddenly on the spot.

The woman took Michonne by the hand and gently pressed it to her soft cheek. "You should go to him now. Don't keep him waiting. You think they will, but men won't wait on you forever."

"He'll wait," Michonne said off-handedly, scoffing. "He's used to this from me, since the day we met."

As she said the words confidently, Michonne thought of how many hours of Rick's life, at this point, he had spent waiting on her, to finish up with inspections, meetings, interviews, home visits, etc. She'd almost have felt sorry for him, if he hadn't repeatedly signed up for the job. And even though things were still tense between them personally, it didn't ever interfere with the work, which she was grateful for. He always understood, waiting was part of the job.

The woman laughed, shaking her head. "Oh, you, young, pretty girls always think that."

Michonne looked at Nyokato confused. It felt like she didn't understand the words even though they were both speaking in perfect English.

"Nevermind, child. You've spent enough time with the old woman. Go now. GO," Nyokato said placing a light kiss and a blessing in Lingala on the top of Michonne's hand before releasing it.

She looked at her watch again. She really did need to go.

"I'll try and come see you again tomorrow, okay?"

Nyokato nodded, still smiling as Michonne retreated, like she was privy to a secret Michonne wasn't in on.

* * *

Rick sat in the jeep sipping on a lukewarm Coke. It didn't taste like the Coca-Colas he drank at home, but he still liked it. As a kid, he'd gone on a tour of the Coca-Cola factory in Atlanta and learned of all the different recipes for Coke from all over the world. That had amazed him; the idea that people all over the world could drink the soda-pop he adored and yet be having a uniquely different experience had been endlessly intriguing to his adolescent mind. And if he was perfectly honest, which he'd only ever been with one person, it was the entire reason that he'd wanted to travel the world in the first place. He just wanted to taste an ice cold Coke in every country and choose his favorite...which turned out to be Nicaraguan, for the record.

"What's up? Whatcha lookin, at?" Rick asked making conversation with his partner Samir, just to break up the silence in the car. Samir wasn't Shane though, he didn't have conversation just for the sake of having it.

Rick looked over at him, hunched over in the passenger seat with his fingers typing furiously into his phone. Rick could not get into cell phones. He was forever impressed by his phone's capabilities but they forever confounded him. In fact, on his last stay home Lori had seriously been discussing getting their _nine year old_ a cell phone. Rick had never heard of something so ridiculous in his life! Her argument had been that it would be for emergencies, but Rick couldn't imagine what kind of emergency Carl could possibly encounter between elementary school and home that would require a cell. Even if it did have the childish, large buttons and ten-number calling capacity that Lori was suggesting.

"Huh?" Samir looked up absently then. "Oh nothing. My mother just sent me a photo of what she made for my Dad for breakfast this morning, _Idli Vada Sambhar_. It's like a spicy donut in a red sauce, _Oh God_." Samir's eyes rolled up into his head.

Rick chuckled at his friend. It was surprising that the young soldier was homesick. Samir, through his phone, had been able to keep in near constant contact with his family and girlfriend. Just yesterday, he'd regaled Rick with the story of his girlfriend's sexy new dress that he worried she'd wear before he returned home to Bangalore. Through his phone, it was as if he'd never left India.

"Just two more months and I'm home on break," Samir said as he went back to ogling pictures of food on his phone.

As he watched Samir, Rick was close to reconsidering the whole phone thing. Maybe a cell was exactly what they needed? _Maybe he needed to be in touch with Lori like that?_ For her to know that though he was halfway across the world in a war zone, he would still be obsessing over the minutiae of her clothing purchases? Was that the kind of attention Lori wanted now? It wasn't always like that. It couldn't have been and have their marriage survive the length of time it had. But in recent years, Lori had grown more and more needy just as, it seemed, Rick came home less and less. Now, he'd begun to worry that there was a correlation there, although they both swore that it was just a coincidence.

Still, questions like that began to come to Rick's mind the more seriously he considered pulling up stakes. Just last week, Shane had officially submitted his papers to Stavros. There was no discouraging him or slowing him down now. He wouldn't even come on this trip with Rick and Michonne because he said he had too much to wrap up in Kisangani. Rick didn't even bother to ask what he meant by that, though if he hadn't known better, he would have thought Shane was cutting and running. Rick had rarely ever seen Shane as one-track minded about anything in his whole life as he was about heading back to Georgia. His final day in Kisangani was a month away and he'd already called to schedule a dinner with Hershel in New York for the middle of May. _This was really happening._ The writing was increasingly on the wall. It was time for Rick to start seriously thinking about his next steps too and what he wanted the next chapter of his life to look like.

"Hey!" Michonne said, appearing suddenly and startling him out of his ruminations. "Sorry about the wait."

She hopped up into the back seat playfully tapping Samir, who barely looked up, on the shoulders.

"Old Grandma Moses finally let you go, huh?" Rick remarked emptying his can of Coke.

"Be nice. She's been through a lot," Michonne answered. "I actually know her...kinda."

"Really how?"

She hesitated, which caught both Rick and Samir's wandering attention. Rick realized suddenly he shouldn't have asked. On the orders of Stavros and Matt, her entire time out of bounds was now a forbidden topic. This was probably one of those stories. Rick knew most of it anyway but he knew she wasn't allowed to speak freely about it in front of Samir.

"I met her in her village," She recovered quickly. "Really lovely place."

"And she's here now?" Samir commented casually. His eyes were still glued to the screen of his phone, so he missed the look Rick exchanged with her. "Tough break."

Michonne cleared her throat thickly. "Yeah. I'd say it was."

Samir was a young man but Rick was still a little disappointed in his off-handedly callous manner. He worked hard to cultivate an empathy in his team. Their jobs required expecting so much of the worst from people that sometimes he struggled with keeping even his own cynicism in check. And sometimes, like now, he saw clearly how much work there was still left to do with his staff too. Yet, more and more Rick recognized it was past time for him to go, but the question lingered. _Who could he confidently hand the reigns over to now if he suddenly up and left?_

"She made it, and she'll be okay here. They seem to know what they're doing," Rick consoled Michonne from afar, turning over the car engine.

He watched in the rearview mirror as Michonne nodded absently and gazed out her window at the camp as it receded from their view.

Whatever had transpired between Michonne and the woman left a deep impression on her obviously. She remained quiet and contemplative the entire ride to their accommodations, leaving Rick to his own, different but similarly disquieting thoughts.


	18. Chapter 18

7/27/15 02:51 EET

 _Incirlik AFB_

"Oh, try not to kill them if you can."

Jesus whispered to the group suddenly in all seriousness as they were gathering quietly at the door separating the administration building side of the sky bridge from the hospital building.

"Are you kidding me?" Carol lowered her weapon slightly to glare at him.

"No, he's not. Killing one in close quarters seems to agitate the others," Sasha said apologetically.

Rick looked disbelievingly at Rosita but she nodded gravely in confirmation.

"Then, how the fuck did ya'll manage all this?" Daryl asked, looking at the carnage surrounding them in the office space.

"Well, we didn't actually, did we?" Jesus quipped, sharing a look with his only fellow survivors.

With that, they all fell into a brief pensive silence as they took their positions at either side of the double doors. Sasha looked to Rick for the final go ahead and with a nod from him, they began.

 _Here we go._

Pushing the doors open quietly, they entered the skybridge. It was wide and completely clear. A distance of approximately 70 feet that, Rick realized then would probably be the easiest 20 yards of this mission. The hall was bounded on both sides by large, clear, floor to ceiling glass windows from which the majority of the air base grounds could be seen. Glenn ran into Jesus' back staring down at the mass of infected that wandered aimlessly around below them.

Even Rick could admit the sight was both amazing and alarming. It seemed like the tarmac times three. Looking at what they were up against, how even three survivors had managed to make it was now a marvel to ponder over. That fact didn't seem lost on them either as Rosita stared below with her eyes like platters.

"Don't. Stop!" Rick was forced to whisper to refocus everyone's attention.

Even that little sound reverberated in the excellent acoustics of the glass hallway and Rick bristled with annoyance.

They inched in a compact group to the next door on soundless feet, taking a breath to peer through the glass before moving through it. Sasha nodded to her left and they followed quietly. Only the rustle of fabric against fabric and their equipment announcing them. Still, an infected, a ravaged woman in bloodied, torn scrubs, looked up from her place trampled on the floor. She unfolded her arms that had been bent under her and turned her head, lying at an awkward angle to try and locate them. She hissed but otherwise didn't move, her legs and back probably broken.

Rick exchanged a glance with Daryl. They weren't just sensitive to noise as he'd heard, they were _hypersensitive_ to it. He tapped Rosita's shoulder indicating that they should slow down and she sent the message forward. They inched along, the lonely hallway seeming to lengthen instead of shortening as they moved.

They paused at a bay of windows onto a ward. One of the two doors to its corridor lay open. In order to pass them both safely, Sasha flattened herself against the wall and took a fast glance in. As much as was possible on a warm, brown-skinned woman like her, she was ashen, looking back at Rick with alarm. Using her palm to explain without words, she instructed everyone down onto their hands and knees. In a move that was both brave and reckless, she scurried across the slippery linoleum-tiled floor under the window, then quickly past the propped-open double door. She emerged quickly on the other side and played lookout. From the other side and a better vantage point, one-by-one, she flagged each of them across to her. As Daryl made his way, she startled and signaled that he halt. Rick backed up, remaining flat against the wall on the opposite side.

Rick watched as the shadow of an infected fell across the glass with Daryl crouched frozen beneath it. The man came all the way to the window, listening, turning his head left and right as if attempting to focus in on a sound. He snarled, pressing his face against the glass, saliva trailing from his mouth and smearing the glass. Only the relative dimness of the auxiliary lights and the creature's poor eyesight stopped him from noticing Sasha and Rick pressed against the walls on either side. He hissed before growing disinterested and wandering away.

Glenn visibly exhaled from well behind Sasha as Carol hung her head briefly in relief. After a moment, Sasha gave Daryl the green-light to proceed. Rick got down on his knees and followed, bringing up the rear. Signaling the correct stairwell, Sasha gave them the go ahead to proceed with a tap on Rosita's flak jacket. Taking the lead then, Rosita and Jesus headed through the doors, followed by Glenn and Carol. Just then, an infected dressed only in his hospital gown and trailing an IV drip on a pole wandered around the corner.

It hissed. Daryl shot it through the eye with a silenced round from his rifle. The body hit the floor with a thud pulling the IV pole with it, which fell against a medical supply cart that in turn crashed against a wall, creating a domino effect of increasingly loud sounds.

"GO!" Sasha whispered harshly, holding the door open for Daryl. He slipped through it and she turned to Rick. He pushed her into stairwell, pulling the door shut behind him.

Infected flooded the hallway unaware of where precisely the sound was coming from. Some threw themselves against the stairwell door as Rick jumped away from it grabbing his rifle but it held. He turned to see his entire complement, six pairs of eyes, on various steps of the stairwell, all staring up at him, wide-eyed in terror.

"Don't stop," He said urgently and they all seemed to come back to reality as the infected on the other side of the door threw themselves unrelentingly at it. The boom of their bodies hitting the doors filled the entire stairwell ominously.

Through the long, narrow vertical window on the landing, Rick caught a glimpse of Michonne's plane taxiing down the runway. He watched as a stream of infected ran behind it trying to throw themselves at the wheels and being mowed down by the propellor blades. He fell out of time and his heart lodged in his throat as he watched the front wheels rise into the air, followed by the back.

"Captain?" Sasha whispered.

 _Thank God she's up._ He thought as he watched the plane lift higher and higher until the blinking lights on its wings became the only thing distinguishing it from the night sky.

"Rick!" Sasha cried out to him sharply, her outstretched hand grasping at his arm roughly, jolted him back on task.

A loud clattering noise pulled both their eyes upward. Hitting various landings on its way down, an infected fell directly onto them before they could leap clear. Followed by three and then four more all tumbling like crazed ragdolls from three landings above. Rick could hear Carol scream startled as the first body struck him hard.

It knocked him back against the wall and he tumbled ass over elbow down the stairs. Rick willed himself not to lose consciousness as his head smacked something hard as down they went. They came to a stop splayed across the lower landing, a mélange of arms and legs as Rick realized he and the infected took Sasha and Daryl, the two people standing nearest him, down with them as well. There was a cacophony of shouts and gunshots as Rosita, Glenn and Jesus dealt with the other things falling from above.

Daryl scrambled to his feet, the least stunned, pulling his service weapon out of his holster and shot the thing at close range while it still snapped at Rick's leg. Rick and Sasha pulled themselves clear in alarm, from both the creature and Daryl's gun, hastily. Unlike the rifles, the booming discharge of the handgun echoed throughout the stairwell, effectively announcing their presence.

That was over with anyway as the others whisper-shouted at each other further up the stairs fighting back the breach of infected.

Daryl looked at them and shrugged innocently. "Sorry."

Rick looked to Sasha and saw panic in her eyes as she gazed down at her hand. Right on the outside of her palm was a full-set of teeth marks. Without thinking about it, Rick leapt shakily to his feet, deliberately crashing into the glass emergency case of the Fireman's Ax heavily with his shoulder. Carol ran down the stairs two at a time and came up behind Sasha before she could fight her off holding her shoulder down.

"W-what are you doing?" Sasha struggled against her, confused.

Daryl caught on and fell on them both, adding more weight to Carol's force pressing Sasha's palm down on the floor. Rick turned and brought the ax down hard just below her wrist, with such force it cracked the tiles beneath. Sasha's face crumpled and she sent up a howl of agony as blood spurted across the landing.

"Holy shit!" Glenn cried as he and the others retreated down the stairs finally, in time to see what had just happened.

Carol pulled the belt out of her pants as a makeshift tourniquet and took the bandana she had around her neck off to put it against Sasha's wound. Meanwhile, Daryl calmly held his pistol to her temple. Time seemed to stop for long seconds as they all waited.

"Sergeant Williams?" Rick said calmly as her entire body shook, waves of endorphins and adrenaline coursing through her. He waited understandingly; he also felt like every nerve ending in his body was on fire and he hadn't been bitten by an infected. The woman continued to scream, the sound cutting through him.

"Sgt. Williams!" He tried again. _It would either happen or not in the next few seconds_.

Carol slapped her face hard and Sasha fell quiet, whimpering. Everyone exhaled and Daryl put his gun back into his holster. Jesus fell to one knee and rifled through his pack.

"Give her this." He said tossing a packet to Daryl.

Daryl tore open the packaging quickly, took off the cap with his teeth and drove the pointed tip into Sasha's thigh as she yelped. Jesus tossed him gauze and pads as well, which Carol quickly applied, while Sasha bit into her other arm to stifle her screams.

"Get her up. We can't stay here." Jesus ordered as the howling and screeching of the infected echoed from other floors. Everything in the building now knew they were in the locked stairwell. He looked at Rick when no one responded to him.

Rick nodded in agreement and they hauled Sasha to her feet as she squealed again in pain. She sniveled and hiccuped, muttering in her own world as she leaned heavily on Daryl.

"Whadda we do now?" Glenn asked. "Our element of surprise is gone."

"We don't need it. The runway is right out those doors through the kitchens." Rosita said nodding down the last flight of stairs to a doorway at the bottom left.

"What about her? She's losing a lot of blood," Carol asked adjusting their makeshift tourniquet.

"T-th-there's a trauma kit in the s-supply closet b-by the elevator in the ER. S-someone has to g-get it." Sasha whimpered. "I'll bl-bleed out otherwise."

Everyone looked at each other. Doorway number one seeming infinitely more appealing than doorway number two.

"She's my friend, I'll do it," Rosita said as Sasha stood trembling and sweating beside her.

"No, I'll do it," Daryl said preparing to shift Sasha's weight onto Glenn and Carol.

"No," Rick interjected firmly as everybody fell silent.

"Just get her on to the plane. Get it started. I'll be there," He directed Carol as he looked at his watch. "Give me three minutes and then go."

They were already four minutes behind Michonne and Dr. Mamet as it was. The sound of large planes were going to draw any of the infected lurking in the countryside in their direction, jeopardizing the transfer. That's why the timings of their arrivals had to be so perfect. Now, they were running behind.

He watched as the group went down the stairs into the kitchen and dragged Sasha out of the emergency exit door onto the runway, before he turned to face his door. Rick quietly eased the stairwell door open and exited onto the floor of the emergency room. It was surprisingly deserted. Leaving his rifle at his side he held the ax over his shoulder like a baseball bat. Moving slowly, he saw a shadow cross in front of one of the curtains. Doubling back, he cut through the horseshoe of the nurses station crouching to the other side of the triage area.

 _So far, so good._

Rick looked over to the elevator bank and saw the closet Sasha had told him about. An aimlessly wandering infected stepped out from behind the wall of the nurses' station in front of him, placidly. Its face was skeletal and waxen, the skin tight and shriveled against its bones as if it'd been dead for forty years instead of forty hours. It was exactly as Mamet had postulated. Lacking anyone new to infect the creatures just went dormant, exhausting the resources of the host. Seeing Rick dimly, it turned on him but he brought his ax down on its skull at the same moment. It fell into his arms and he caught it easing it to the floor quietly. He grabbed the handle and tried to pull the blade out of the thing's skull. Rick put a foot in its chest and pulled. The blade hardly budged.

Suddenly, he heard an outraged screech behind him and turned to see the infected behind the screen must have heard the scuffle. There were corresponding screeches from deep within the floor, corridors away. _Were they communicating?_ He wondered that for a split second before the thing, that was formerly a doctor going by the lab coat, charged him. Rick yanked two times with all the strength he possessed before the blade dislodged from the skull at his feet. He spun out of the way on his heel and swung out with the ax, smacking the "doctor" in the back of the head with the flat of the blade. Its head flew forward into the metal elevator doors with a sickening clang and Rick heard the neck snap. He rushed to the closet door and pulled out the heavy pack just as more screeches began to ring out.

Swinging it onto his shoulder, Rick rushed for the sliding glass doors of the emergency room exit. They didn't look like they would open as he neared. _Smart money would be on someone having locked them to keep the infected in._ The sound of those creatures closing in on his position resounded behind him. He didn't have the time to take the chance. Deciding in that split second against stealth, Rick threw the ax end over end like a lumberjack. The glass door shattered. Any remaining element of surprise left to him was gone. Sweeping the ax back off the ground as he moved, Rick ran full out toward the plane whose propellers were already turning.

"Come on!" Daryl yelled as Jesus stood across from him in the cargo bay, calmly picking off the first infected to breach the ER doors.

Rick tossed the ax and then the pack to Daryl who caught them easily and dumped them behind him. The plane began picking up speed as it started down the runway.

"Move your ass, Captain!" He shouted at Rick like a drill sergeant as the plane seemed to pull away. Rick pushed himself, requiring more, and getting it, his chest burning as he willed himself to catch up.

Daryl held on to the sides and reached for Rick's outstretched hand helping him the last step up. Jesus slapped the button and the cargo bay doors began to close as Rick collapsed against the wall. He slid a little as they lifted up and then rolled down pulled by gravity without the energy to move. Just as the wheels left the ground, the doors closed completely and he lay there face down, gasping.

"Nice work, ol' man," Daryl commended him with a pat on the bottom like a fellow ballplayer before grabbing the trauma bag and walking away.

"Color me impressed, Sir. I was about to enter you in the deadpool myself," Jesus said with his large rifle slung over his shoulder, retreating toward the front of the plane.

Rick lay there against the cold metal flooring for long minutes trying to catch his breath before he heard Glenn calling for him.

"Rick!" Carol called from the cockpit. He recognized that tone.

Rick hauled himself to his feet and moved slowly to the front of the plane where most of their group stood huddled.

"Can you see them? Are they not there?" He asked pushing past a grim-faced Glenn and solemn looking Daryl into the cockpit.

"They're there," She answered hesitantly.

Rick followed Carol's gaze out onto the dark, lonely stretch of roadway, dotted only by the light of flaming fuselage leading to the mangled nose and front portion of the plane body partially submerged in the inky black river beside it.

"Get us down, _now_ ," Rick ordered icily.


	19. Chapter 19

***Author's Note***

Hey Guys! I hope you are enjoying yourselves thus far! From the feedback and the love I'm getting I think the answer is yes and I cannot thank y'all enough. As always, I leave notes for housecleaning, any clarification and just when I want to give y'all back some of the love I'm feeling. Again, thank you so much. So...

 **Guest and everyone else who asked for longer chapters:** _a confession_. The way this story was originally conceived, you were actually _supposed_ to get one present-day (aka 2015) chapter along with one flashback chapter combined for one very looooong update each time. That was the plan when I intended to release this when it was 100% complete. Fortunately or unfortunately, I jumped the gun because I wanted it out before the start of the new season (call it premature exhibition). Now as it stands, it is, I'd say, about 85% done but at my writing speed I was concerned early release might mean everything is out before I was absolutely done and then I'd have y'all like the girl in Janet Jackson's "What Have You Done For Me Lately", like "Is that the end?" So I split my chapters up to give myself some _more_ breathing room. The end result (short updates) is not a great solution, I'll admit. But I will promise you guys something...as SOON as the final chapter of this beast is slain and given the thumbs up by my Beta (I gotta give my ace time to work her magic too) then the updates will come fast and furious. I'll throw my update schedule out completely. That's a pinkie swear (which is some pretty solemn stuff, LOL!)

 **To Those** **Who asked for more Rick and Michonne** **in flashback:** Aww! Yay! Wow! Thank you! That seems like a really cool ask. If you want more that means I'm doing something right (at least that's how I choose to read it). And all I can say to that is...well, we kinda get what we get. It wasn't my intention from the outset but as most writers have experienced, the story became what it wanted to be...which seems to be more of an action/adventure _Romancing The Stone_ \- type deal. So it's true, the straight romantical interpersonal stuff gets the short-shrift. But I do still put nuggets or easter eggs for their relationship into each chapter. I guess though that means you have to do the work of piecing it all together (to get the full scope or picture of their relationship and what they mean to each other) for yourself. Less ideal for a purportedly Richonne story, right? I know. But hopefully, if I'm doing it right, by this time, an image of them is starting to emerge and make the decisions they're making in the present-day and flashback portions of the story make sense. Still, you do have to remember, in FLASHBACK!story they're just colleagues and really good friends, not lovers so ( **WARNING: SPOILER!** ) any and all interaction between them is gonna be chaste (or to my mind, let's just call it..."unsatisfactory", LOL!) So, I'm saying it now so that no one feels misled later on. * _Rick and Michonne WILL NOT be making sweet sticky love in flashback*_ (and I feel like, in the earlier parts of the PRESENT-DAY!story you can sort of pick up on that fact - that it never happened between them). Okay, I hope that helps...at least somewhat. Anyhoo, if, on the other hand, you merely want a little more FLASHBACK!R&M moments? Well then, carry on, Dear Reader, carry on...

April 26th, 2011

Kisangani, DRC

Rick raised his glass, as over three dozen people followed suit. "To two of the finest people, I've ever had the pleasure to know. Homer said, 'There's nothing more admirable than two people who see eye to eye keeping house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.' Here's to seeing eye to eye!"

"Here, here!" the group cheered.

Shane clapped Rick on the back heartily in gratitude before stepping up to his wife-to-be, leaned against the bar. He grabbed Maggie by the shoulders startling her and dipped her back for a kiss. Michonne smoothly retrieved the wine glass from her hand so she didn't spill it as Maggie fell into her fiancé's arms. The group whooped and hollered appreciatively as Shane made a show of it.

Rick's eyes stayed on Michonne though, as she plastered a smile on her face that she obviously didn't feel. He could always tell, when the smile didn't reach her eyes, that it wasn't real. Since news of their engagement broke, Michonne's opinion of Shane seemed to have plummeted further than ever but since technically they still weren't speaking, Rick had yet to talk to her about it.

Maggie laughed happily, cupping Shane's face and showering him with kisses as Shane beamed.

Rick had rarely seen his best friend this happy. He was pleased he'd gotten to see it since it might be short-lived.

Shane's original plan had involved meeting Hershel and asking for both Maggie's hand and the family horse ranch simultaneously. Knowing Hershel as he did, Rick somehow didn't expect that to go off all that well and told his friend so, trying to prepare him for possible disappointment. It surprised him however, when instead of rethinking his plan as Rick hoped he would, Shane decided to just forego asking Hershel all together and popped the question directly to Maggie instead.

In an old fashioned household like the Greenes', Rick suspected this development would go over like a lead balloon. Particularly to an old-school Southern gentleman like Hershel, this might be more than just a faux pas but an actual declaration of war. Still, Rick knew if anyone was up for a fight, it was Shane and Maggie. Hershel had raised a feisty young woman with a steel backbone and Shane was always good for a tussle. That was part of what, to Rick, made them such a good match. They were each other's complement. Maggie kept Shane's excesses in check and he helped her live a little, together obstacles, of any sort, stood little chance. Rick smiled mentally wishing them luck.

Michonne put the drinks she held down on the bar, pulling Rick back from his thoughts. Her face was mask of happiness covering up a melancholy that made him curious. As he watched, she spoke to a few people briefly before surreptitiously walking out onto the veranda of the Cantina alone. He knew she wanted to be alone out there, but this would be their best chance to talk, having rented the entire upper floor of the restaurant that night for their small gathering.

It was that that had been the topic of one of their only non work-related exchanges for the entire past month. While they were in Uganda, they had agreed to organize this event jointly, in honor of both Shane's imminent departure and his engagement to Maggie. But in the end, all that had come to mean was Rick paid her his half of the expenses and left her to arrange the entire thing alone. She'd asked for no other input from him and so he'd offered none. Now, as he followed her out onto the balcony he hoped to remedy that.

"Hey," he said gently as if he was afraid of scaring her off.

Michonne turned and looked at him over her shoulder before turning back toward the street. "Hey."

Their conversations had always been effortless, but the silence between them was awkward now.

"It turned out really nice, 'Chonne." He started, walking up to the white stone balustrade beside her. He mirrored her posture, leaning on his elbows, arms over the stone railing.

"Thanks. I think so too."

"So then why don't you look happy for them?" Rick asked, knowing at least some of the truth.

She'd done a good job of hiding it from everybody else but Rick knew she wanted more for Maggie than Shane could offer. He tried not to be offended on his best friend's behalf that Michonne didn't think he was good enough.

"Who says I'm not? I'm here. I'm wearing this dress."

They both looked down at the vibrant one-shouldered, grape-colored dress she wore that accentuated her deep brown, flawlessly smooth skin. The dress was lovely, like she was. Still, she looked amazing in almost anything, if he was being honest. This didn't constitute any real effort on her part.

"Try again," He prodded.

"I planned this party," She offered.

"You did."

"So then what more do I need to do to show my support?" She said with frustration.

"Be actually happy for them," Rick said simply and Michonne scoffed. "He's different with her, Michonne. I've never seen him give half as much effort to anyone else. And I know you know I'd never let him hurt her. She's like my baby sis."

"I _know_. And I am _act_ -" She stopped, looking at Rick's skeptical expression.

They were enveloped in silence again. _Maybe he was pushing her too hard_ , Rick thought as he leaned sideways over the railing and looked down. The main floor was jumping as it usually was on a Friday night, with people dancing out on the patio to one of Papa Wemba's popular new Congolese rumbas. _Maybe_ , he realized, _he should just stick with leaving her alone as he had been before_.

"I'll leave you to it," he turned to go.

"So Homer, huh?" Michonne spoke suddenly stopping him. "Their relationship appeals to the philosopher in you?"

Rick paused, glancing over at her smiling at him, teasing him really.

He shrugged. "I looked it up. I couldn't think of anything to say. Shane gave this great toast at my wedding but I'm no good at that stuff."

"Oh, you're not so bad," Michonne smiled. "But I have to admit I kinda guessed that."

"Oh yeah, so you guessed I cheated but what about you? I'm supposed to believe you quote _Antoine de Saint-Exupéry_ off the top of your head? Really?"

Michonne looked stunned. "Hey, I could have known that quote from memory. I have a good one."

"Yes, you do," Rick acknowledged, still waiting for her to admit it though. He turned to her and folded his arms across his chest expectantly. There was another round of silence.

"Okay, alright, I did look it up," She said finally, turning to adopt a similar stance. "How'd you guess? Wait, how'd you even know who Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is?"

Rick rolled his eyes. "I did go to college, you know."

"Of course, you did, I-I didn't mean to imply that…" Michonne trailed off looking chastened, and fell silent again.

"Relax," He laughed at her contrite stumbling. "He also wrote _The Little Prince_ and I do have a kid, so... Otherwise, I wouldn't have known it myself."

Michonne smiled genuinely then. It was nice to see her smiling for real. It made her almost unbearably beautiful.

It felt like it had been awhile since he'd last seen that. With the inquiry disrupting everyone's lives, the past month had been hard on all of them. But he knew, it had been particularly rough on her. Instead of being treated like a hero for bringing misconduct to light, because that part had to be kept secret, she'd strangely become something of a pariah in their small international community for breaking a cardinal rule and endangering her colleagues. Then, instead of supporting her through it, Rick had made it worse by allowing his own hurt feelings to dictate their interactions. Even when they'd been on assignment in Uganda he'd kept her at arm's length, allowing Samir to pick up most of the slack.

"I'm sorry," He said to her suddenly.

Michonne sobered quickly confused. "For what?"

"For how I've been acting, I-"

Michonne put her hand over his on the railing and he fell silent. "Don't worry about it, I'm a big girl."

"So you're okay?"

She smiled warmly at that. "I'm okay."

"Now," She whispered to him, turning again to lean against the balustrade and look inside at the people celebrating with Maggie and Shane. "Be honest. What would you say the over under on them would be?"

"Of making it?" He laughed at her creating mischief, laying odds on their best friends.

"Of even getting to the altar..."

* * *

Michonne glanced around the alcove leading to the restrooms without luck. Rick had assured her that it wasn't the end of the world. But she wanted to help him locate his sunglasses nevertheless. So far they hadn't been in any of the places upstairs she'd looked for them. She headed down to where the proprietor Gilberto had told her his main lost and found was.

"Sorry, I haven't seen them," The bartender shouted over the throbbing bassline pouring out on the speakers just over his head, when she asked him. "You can try one of the busboys. Tabu helped bus upstairs tonight. He'd be your best bet. He's probably out back."

He pointed the way for her and she followed it. The music grew distant as Michonne navigated the long dark hallway to the back of the restaurant. Michonne felt weary going all the way back there on the off chance someone might point her in the right direction but she was almost at the door. She figured she might as well.

Before she reached it, however, she heard the sounds of a scuffle. Moving faster but more cautiously, tiptoeing to avoid the telltale sign of her heels clicking against the concrete floors, she approached. She paused when she heard voices.

"You think you're a clever one, eh?" The voice speaking was Congolese and deep. Michonne imagined a burly man though she couldn't see anything from where she stood behind the nearly closed door.

"Business doesn't end when you say so. It ends when we do...and I promise, you will not like how we end things."

There was no mistaking the menace in that statement. Michonne heard further scuffling and the impact of a blow. This was the point at which she knew she should mind her business and continue on her search for Tabu.

"Nothing to say, eh?" The voice laughed. "You had a lot of talk a moment ago. Telling us what you were and weren't going to do for us. Clever, clever, clever white people always telling us Africans what they will and won't do," He said the disgust in his voice coming through the door.

"Did you find him?" A loud voice called to Michonne from behind.

She turned startled to see the bartender standing down the hall holding his empty ice bin. She felt like she'd been caught doing exactly what she had been, eavesdropping on something she had no business in. She hustled back down the hall toward the young man, shaking her head. She heard as the door behind her opened right as she rounded the corner, moving as fast as she could in her impractical footwear.

Michonne didn't know why the whole exchange had the hairs on the back of her neck on end but it did. She was hit with such a sense of foreboding by the time she got back upstairs that Maggie frowned when she saw her.

"You okay?" Maggie said grabbing her hand.

"I'm fine," Michonne reassured her with as much cheer as she could muster.

Maggie moved in close and whispered to Michonne. "I know you're not over the moon about this but I want you to know I appreciate the effort you've been making."

Michonne's attention was still on what she'd overheard but she tried to focus on Maggie's words. "I don't understand why everyone is so convinced I'm unhappy."

" _Everyone_?" Maggie repeated surprised.

Michonne saw belatedly that Maggie didn't realize she wasn't the only person who had picked up on her disapproval. _Whoops._

Michonne shook her head dismissing it and hoping Maggie would too. "Just Rick, it's nothing."

"That's something, Michonne. Are you really not happy for me?" Maggie asked while Michonne's mind still wandered back to the incident downstairs.

"Don't be silly. I love Shane," She lied distractedly. "Have you seen Rick anywhere? I need to tell him I couldn't find his glasses."

"Oh, Makemba had them in her purse," Maggie said easily. "But, back up, you _love_ Shane? Since when? Michonne, are you okay?"

Maggie expression turned serious, searching Michonne's face for what she wasn't revealing. "Mich, I love him and he loves me. Do you know he's giving up his career with the UN for me?"

Michonne couldn't help the healthy dose of skepticism that came across her face then. She knew in a way Maggie could not, from years of early morning conversations, late night debates and liquor-fueled confessionals, Shane couldn't care less about the UN. About his career, _yes_ , about his relationship with Rick, _definitely_ , but about the United Nations and its charter, core mission or philosophical tenets, absolutely not. If that was the story he was feeding Maggie, Michonne felt increasingly justified in her concerns.

"I'm not saying he loved what he was doing here but he's making plans to leave and settle down for me, Michonne. Because he wants to make a life and babies with _me_." Maggie must have read her expression.

The earnestness in Maggie's face was sweet, Michonne had to admit. Still, she couldn't shake the feeling something was amiss. She hadn't found anything further that suggested Shane was in league with DaDa Ngangabouka. The internal investigation commissioned by Stavros hadn't turned up anything so far either, so Michonne was beginning to feel silly. Even Rick had pointed out to her earlier that he'd never seen Shane like this. Even he believed that they could go the distance. _So why couldn't she just be happy for them?_

"I just want you to be happy honey, and if he makes you happy, then have him." Michonne shrugged.

"Thanks for the permission, Mom," Maggie joked and Michonne laughed as well.

She realized she had to shake this foreboding she felt. _Everything was fine._

Michonne looked over to the corner of the room where Shane was bringing bottles of beer back to his crowded table.

"So Kem had the glasses, huh?" Michonne remarked after a minute of silence.

Maggie followed Michonne's gaze to where they had settled on Rick sitting with Shane, Makemba and Aarav, all speaking companionably together. She nodded at Michonne. "She was keeping them for him."

"It would have been nice of her to mention that when I started looking."

"Yeah, well, it kept you occupied elsewhere for a while, didn't it?" Maggie offered with a sly smile.

Michonne rolled her eyes as they walked together over to the table.

"Hey there! Sorry about the runaround. I found them," Rick said to Michonne as soon as she was close enough to hear, rising from his seat. "Sit here, I'll get another chair."

Makemba looked disappointed which inexplicably pleased Michonne for a moment.

"You?" Rick gestured to Maggie as Michonne sat in his offered seat.

"Nope." She shook her head. "According to this one, as long as he has a lap, I'll always have a place to sit." Maggie said flopping down into Shane's lap as everyone laughed.

"Ooof," Shane cried out in pain as Maggie fell heavily onto him.

Maggie looked down at him in alarm, touching his stomach. "Oh baby, are you okay?"

Michonne watched him closely as he struggled to keep his face even.

"I'm good, Lambchop. You're just getting heavy," He joked trying not to visibly wince, Michonne noticed.

Michonne rolled her eyes again as Maggie slapped him playfully in the shoulder. Rick smiled, watching the exchange. Michonne looked around the table. They were all smiling.

 _This was good. Why couldn't she just let it go?_

Her eyes fell onto Shane again only to find him looking right back at her from across the table as he held his stomach. Maggie chatted obliviously with the others while Shane and Michonne glared at each other.

Michonne didn't know what it was yet, but she realized then something was definitely up with Shane Walsh.


	20. Chapter 20

***Author's Note***

Hey Folks, Really quickly: from here on out, the time stamps are gonna be sort of important. Just 'cuz I jump around a little bit (by hours, not days) and I worry that it'll be a little bit confusing if you don't follow the time stamps. (Along those lines, I tried to be careful but if I messed up on a time, please DM me and I'll correct it- but bear in mind we're crossing time zones). ...And yes, I know I'm a total nerd for even posting this AN. Later Gators!

7/27/15 03:06 EET

 _Sümbül Caddesi,_ Adana, Turkey

 _No._

Rick stepped back from the cockpit, ignoring the looks of sympathy he was getting from Daryl and Glenn and moved to the side door of the plane. Rick leaned his head against the cool glass in it and held the long silver handle, fighting to remain calm. He struggled against the riot in his stomach that threatened to push everything he'd eaten in the past day back up on him.

 _They couldn't have gotten this close and come this far for him to have lost her in a plane crash._

It just wasn't possible. Not with the walking dead now roaming the earth, biting people. Not with a disease that could kill in a matter of minutes jumping from person to person like angry fleas. Not with all the close calls they'd had already had in the last forty-eight hours, not to mention all the others they'd had throughout their entire adult lives. And not with the just plain unlikelihood that they could or would ever find each other again in a world turned upside down. It just couldn't be that after all that, she would die in something as mundane and all-together pedestrian as a plane crash. Not after all the flights they'd taken and all the little puddle-jumpers and rickety twin engines she'd gotten on in her life.

 _Not after all that._ His mind just wouldn't allow him to fathom it. _They didn't die...not like this._

Rick's eyes filled with unshed tears. He blinked them back. He couldn't do that until he'd seen her body, he wouldn't until he knew and right now, regardless of all the pitiful looks he was getting, he didn't _know_. Nothing was certain. He released the handle on the door backing away, willing the millions of thoughts swirling in his mind to distill down to a single one: _Nothing was definite, either way, until she was in his arms._

"Butts in seats!" Carol called out from the cockpit then. "Butts in seats, now!"

Everyone obeyed as the plane began to shake violently on its way to a rocky landing. Still, as Rick already knew, Carol was an excellent pilot and it just bounced a few times as it landed before coming to a full stop. Rick was already out of his seatbelt and headed back to the door by then. On edge, he tensed when he felt someone right behind him and turned to see Dixon standing there. Waiting, just barely, for the others to join them, Rick pulled on the silver handle and opened the door. He jumped out with Daryl right behind.

"Mr. Rovia, Private Rhee," Rick pointed. "Create a perimeter, anything moving that's not us, kill it. Corporal Dixon, you're with me."

"Everybody else, stay on board." His voice was virtually affectless, matching his mood. Looking at the horror before him, his only recourse was deadening himself to the pain.

Rick turned to see Rosita and Sasha lingering in the doorway.

"Sergeant, I need you out of the way and back on your pallet, if possible. Help her please." He spoke to Rosita. Sasha leaned heavily against the door, still pallid and sweaty but able to hear and understand what she was being told.

Rick could hear the light pops of Glenn and Jesus' rifles picking off things as he strode to the river's edge. The plane's entire front end, the part that wasn't in the water lay mangled and still aflame in places. The intense light and heat coming off the small fires felt like it could singe the hairs on his face. It made the wreckage look far worse up close than it had from the air.

 _Could anyone survive this?_ He wondered doubtfully.

Rick looked into the bent and twisted cavity that had once been half of the cabin. Mercifully, it was empty. Pushing his rifle behind him, he climbed up onto the remains of the wing and inched on his hands and knees slowly across it onto the top of the cockpit. The rushing, dark waters of the river swirled around inside it. Peering over the lip and down into the hole, he saw Milton still strapped into the jumpseat, up to his waist in water.

The doctor's head was lolled back as blood streamed from a gash in his hairline to cover half his face but he was alive. Slight movement at his throat gave him away. He was even semi-conscious.

"Doctor? Doctor, can you hear me?" Rick called down to him. "Daryl, Glenn, c'mere. We got a live one."

They approached, Glenn still facing outward to cover them.

Jesus radioed for Rosita to come help them cover.

"Hand me a light?" Rick said shaking his head at Daryl's offered flashlight. "No, Rhee, the big one."

Glenn pulled his massive torch out of his bag and handed it to Rick.

"Geezus," Daryl said at the fully illuminated scene.

Murky water filled the cabin on a slant with the pilot's seat fully submerged, the copilot's three-quarters underwater and Milton, in the jump seat behind the copilot, actually at the highest elevation. Rick could see Tobin's pale arms floating lifelessly from behind either side of his seat. He pointed the light toward the co-pilot but it was obscured by all the detritus of the cabin.

"Mamet?" Rick tried to rouse the doctor. "Milton!"

Lying flat on his stomach and anchored by Daryl and Glenn, he could reach down and just barely reach the doctor with the tips of his fingers. Rick slapped him lightly and his eyes fluttered.

"Doctor!" He shouted and the man moaned. Rick lunged forward, straining their grip on his legs and hit Milton harder. "Milton, wake up!"

Mamet's eyes opened then startled, still moaning hazily.

"Doctor, where's Michonne?" Rick asked as soon as he was certain the doctor was lucid.

"There. There!" Milton pointed frantically to the copilot's seat. Rick shined the light but still couldn't see behind the chair back. His heart ran riot in his chest, urging him to drop everything and get her. If she was even still there. Visions of her being ejected from the seat made his stomach roll.

He dropped the flashlight into the cabin and turned his attention back to the doctor.

"Unbuckle yourself and grab onto me," Rick said with urgency, trying to remember that even to Michonne, Milton was the most important member of their mission.

Milton obeyed, crying out in pain, something was obviously broken.

"Pull us up!" Rick said straining to hold Milton under the shoulders as the guys hauled them up by his legs. As soon as he could reach, Daryl took over pulling Milton the rest of the way while Glenn held Rick steady.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something move. The abandoned flashlight bobbed on the water, illuminating different parts of the cockpit as it moved. As it rolled lazily with the waves, Rick realized what he had seen. Splayed out in the water creating a halo around her dark head were Michonne's locs.

Rick hauled himself out of the opening and slid down the side of the plane onto the ground quickly. He frantically stripped off his rifle and jacket, kicking off his shoes simultaneously.

"Uh, Cap?" Glenn said as he and Daryl tried to ease Milton gingerly down the side of the plane.

"She's still alive in there!" was all Rick said before he rushed to the bank and dove into the water head first.

Though not ice cold, the water was still brisk as Rick moved through it, over the immersed broken left wing that sat lodged against the bottom of the riverbank. With his eyes open, he could just barely make out the bobbing flashlight acting as a beacon through the turbid water. Jagged, broken glass separated him from the inside plane as he reached out feeling for the breach. Carefully, he made his way in.

Tobin's body floated eyes open, still locked in his harness seat belt to the pilot's seat. Rick swam past, to where he could see Michonne floating similarly. Coming across the instrument panel in front of her, he broke the surface right next to her, gasping. Michonne's side of the cabin, like the back where Milton sat, was not completely under the water. It only came up to her neck but her head was bent forward into it. Rick's heart pounded.

Her mouth had been submerged, while her nose hung mere centimeters above the waterline. Her locs floated around her face blocking it from view. Rick quickly put two shaky fingers to her throat feeling desperately for her carotid. Relief swept through him as he felt the faint but insistent throb of life. He cupped her head in his hands and pushed her hair back to look at her face. She was unconscious and banged up but okay.

"You got her?" Daryl called from above peering down with his skinny penlight.

"I got her," Rick replied thickly, sighing and pressing his forehead to hers.

"Rick! It's getting crowded up here. We gotta go!" Glenn called from his position further away.

Rick unbuckled Michonne and she fell heavily into his arms. Her eyes opened for a split second and she cried out as he grabbed her. _Something was wrong._ Trying to maintain his grip on her, he pulled himself out of the water through the seats. It was a struggle.

"Damn." Daryl conceded and hopped down from the roof and into the cabin. He took Michonne's limp arms and helped Rick haul her out of the water. "Glenn!"

The private appeared above them and got on his stomach to pull her the rest of the way. She moaned as he hoisted her up. A moment later, as they helped Glenn pull her, Rick and Daryl saw why. There was a large piece of fuselage running clean through her side. Rick pushed down the rising panic in his chest. Grabbing Glenn's torchlight, Rick followed Daryl out of the compartment.

The scene was a far different one than what Rick had left a moment before. Carol, Jesus and Rosita stood in the space between the two planes creating a corridor and holding off a relatively steady stream of infected stumbling out of the countryside. As they'd feared would happen they'd been on the ground too long. Luckily, as they had also calculated, the one thing still working to their advantage was the river at their back, limiting the sides they had to protect to two.

Glenn rejoined the group firing as Daryl and Rick hustled Michonne onto the plane.

"Get her on a pallet," Rick directed Daryl placing her carefully in his arms just inside the plane door.

Rick doubled back to the riverbank for his gear. Pulling his gun up, he flanked Rosita.

"Get inside, they need you," He ordered her, shooting at the oncoming wave. "Everybody, get inside!"

* * *

 _Michonne knelt and gathered the silken fabric in her hands, billowing it so it fell perfectly, fanned out around Maggie's feet. She looked up at the blinding white material. It was so so beautiful._

 _It was perfect._

" _My mother helped me pick it out," Maggie answered Michonne's unasked question._

" _Your mother?" Michonne asked confused._

" _Oh yes. Isn't it pretty?" Maggie answered as Michonne rose to look at her. It was pretty, the fabric a gossamer that floated around her feet, the bodice fit her frame perfectly with small shimmering crystals all over. Her veil cascaded over her shoulders just right._

" _But Maggie, your mother's been dead for fifteen years," Michonne questioned._

 _Maggie's back was to her but she turned slowly toward Michonne then._

" _Well," She answered matter-of-factly laughing. "I've been dead for five."_

 _Michonne gasped. Maggie's face was a corruption. The skin was decayed, leathery and tight across her cheekbones. It pulled back from her teeth and eye sockets, so her large green eyeballs bulged wildly from them, lidless. A putrid hole in her skull oozed bloody discharge that ran down the side of her face and dripped brown foulness onto the pristine white of her gown._

 _Her lipless mouth chattered up and down as she spoke, teeth gnashing at Michonne. "...And now, so are you!"_

 _A sudden searing pain in her side made Michonne cry out. She looked down and the ghoul in the dress wearing Maggie's skin had stabbed her in the side. The pain was agonizing as she looked down and saw moisture seeping through her clothes. It did it again, the large knife sliding easily into her skin like it was entering its home in a butcher's block. She touched a hand to the wound and it came back covered in her thick, dark red life's blood._

" _Why?" Michonne cried out as the creature cackled, its teeth chattering up and down like one of the old wind-up toys._

 _As it laughed, a first eye fell away unnoticed, followed by the other, leaving two empty voids._

" _I don't understand, Mich," It spoke plaintively in Maggie's voice as putrescent hunks of flesh and clumps of hair fell in wet globs from its skull, soiling the white dress. "Don't you want to come to my wedding?"_

Michonne screamed.

She struggled to open her eyes but it was as if they were taped shut. She tried to sit up but the pain was intense. Many hands pressed her back onto the bedding.

"Shh, shh, shh, steady now. It's alright, you're alright," A familiar voice whispered to her as she fought through the pain, to open her eyes. She slapped away the arms reaching for her. "Michonne, Michonne, open your eyes. Look at me."

Her eyelids finally cooperated and opened slowly. A figure leaned over her, but the light was too bright in her eyes, she couldn't make them out. She squinted, trying to focus. She slapped away a hand that again reached for her face and cried out.

"Who am I?" The voice said calmly. "Who am I?"

The pain in her gut was intense. Michonne fell back against the pillows and moaned. Why had Maggie stabbed her? She muttered, trying to speak, trying to ask the question, trying to find out where she was and who held her.

"You gotta keep her awake," Someone else said.

"Stay with me now. Michonne, stay with me." The voice said forcefully holding her shoulders as she felt herself succumbing to the pain. "Michonne?"

The fog grew thick again around her, pulling her back into the dark.

* * *

7/27/15 07:42 CAT

Michonne's eyes fluttered open and she was inundated with sensations, like her nerve endings were misfiring. It was as if she couldn't process them all and they were overwhelming her circuits. She gasped.

The first thing she felt was pain. Unreal amounts of pain, pain radiating through her midsection and up through her chest and down into her pelvis. The next thing was short of breath, she felt like someone was sitting on her chest so she couldn't breathe. Something was wrapped tightly around her abdomen restricting her lung capacity, it was as if she was asphyxiating. Then she felt cold, like she'd caught a bone-deep chill. It felt like she might never be warm again. That sense was mitigated, however, by the arms around her. Arms that radiated heat, warmth that kept her from shivering.

After several excruciating seconds, it all slowly started to coming back to Michonne.

The empirical order returned, instead of the wild, overloaded circuitry of moments earlier. She was somehow reconstituting her senses again, her awareness of her head, shoulders, knees and toes. She wiggled her extremities just to make sure it was all still there, to further organize the bombardment of sensations. She could begin to organize it all then. She was pressed against someone with their arms wrapped tightly – _no, that was a bandage wrapped around her stomach_ – loosely around her. She could feel her cheek against his chest and her head under his chin. She could hear his heart beating and feel the rise and fall of his breathing. She could smell the sweat, gunpowder and something else that mingled beneath her nose.

 _It was Rick._

She shivered again involuntarily and his arms briefly tightened around her.

"Please don't tell me we're naked under this blanket," She croaked hoarsely. "You're not saving me from hypothermia, are you?"

She felt him exhale deeply and then chuckle before answering.

"Do we feel naked?" He asked.

She couldn't precisely tell, but she was pretty sure she still had a sense of her bra and panties. She shook her head slightly.

"Do you want us to be?"

"Geez guy, could you buy a girl a drink first?" She offered, trying not to laugh. It was far too painful.

"Hey, I've bought you _plenty_ of drinks," He quipped, his voice a deep rumble in his chest.

Michonne couldn't fight the chuckle that gave her. She painfully dragged her hand slowly up from her side. Her entire body ached as she placed her palm near her face against his pecs. He was wearing a t-shirt. She reached up and pulled weakly at the elastic of his neckline with her finger so it snapped back on him. She felt his body shake as he laughed.

"You okay?" She asked in a whisper.

"In this case, I think that's my line." He answered.

"Doesn't negate the question."

"I am now." He answered simply.


	21. Chapter 21

April 30th, 2011

Kisangani, DRC

Michonne felt like an idiot.

 _This was not her._

She was not a paranoid person by nature. She didn't know what she was doing. Only a crazy person would stand in the middle of the Protection Coordination Unit's offices trying to jimmy open the top drawer of a desk with a letter opener. Still, that was surely what she was attempting. She didn't know what had come over her recently but as the days passed she'd become more and more convinced something was wrong with Shane. She'd been unable to shake a growing suspicion of him.

It wasn't, precisely, in anything he was doing, more in things he was not. Office-work and job responsibilities that kept Shane in any way desk-bound used to be anathema to him. Michonne remembered Rick at past Missions having to keep after him, hectoring like an old fishwife to get him to get any of his paperwork submitted. Shane loved to be, as Michonne's mother might have put it, in the street. But in the past few weeks, there had hardly been a day when Michonne had passed by their offices and not seen him sitting behind a pile of papers.

Maggie had called it finishing up and closing out his UN business. Michonne had begun to wonder if it wasn't more like covering his tracks. Not that she had any solid proof of that but it still nagged at her. In all honesty, she'd also found it inconvenient since it had prevented her from doing the very thing she wanted to... _snoop_. Finding a time when the office was open but empty would have been a trick anyway but it became particularly complicated because of Shane's new-found fastidiousness about his work.

Still, when the coast was at long-last clear, there had been nothing to find. Not on his desk's surface anyway —not that she had any idea what she was looking for, precisely. Funnily enough, of all the invectives Michonne could and did often lob at him: Peter Pan, cad, rascal, the one thing she could never ever call Shane Walsh was a slob. He had always kept a meticulously clean workspace.

Michonne had always attributed that surprising quirk to a childhood spent being raised by an old woman. That and Shane's aforementioned general aversion to paperwork or desk work of any sort, kept his desk virtually empty at all times. As a result, there had been precious little on top of his desk to see in the first place. Michonne had known that might be the case when she decided to embark on this ill-advised mission. So she had always known what had to be done —she would need to break into his desk.

If there was going to be anything at all damning to be found, it would have to be in there. Still, as she did it, Michonne wasn't entirely certain she hadn't lost her mind. She'd allowed a nagging sense of foreboding to get the better of her. Following their intense stare-down at his farewell party, it dogged her. As insistent as an approaching freight train barreling down the tracks, the feeling had bedeviled her. Something awful was about happen and she grew dreadfully certain that Shane would be at its center.

"Yes!" She muttered as the catch on the ancient desk flipped up opening the top desk drawer easily.

Unfortunately, the desk yielded very little. She looked through the items in it quickly. Cataloguing the knick-knacks from pens and pencils to peppermint candies and a matchbook, Michonne vacillated between irritation and relief. The truth was Michonne didn't really _want_ to find anything. She wanted to believe that in three months Maggie would be ending her assignment in the DRC and heading home to embark on the next phase of her life with a man worthy of her trust.

Michonne fiddled with an inner latch that released the side drawers and after a brief glance to the office entrance, slipped the bottom drawer open. It was empty except for an old catcher's mitt, a softball and an ancient phone book. Michonne picked the book up curiously. Like the phone books at home, it was a great big yellow and white paper doorstopper. And oddly, it had to be at least five or ten years old. She thumbed through the pages. But other than for a couple missing pages and a few businesses circled in black marker, it was hardly of note.

Throwing it back down in the desk, she moved on to the next drawer, it was empty apart from a well loved menu. She rested her head onto her hand propped up on the desk in frustration. _Of course, Shane wasn't going to make this easy._

"What are you doing?" The voice came from somewhere off to the side and behind, startling her.

Michonne had forgotten that some of the offices were adjoined in the rear. In case of emergency, the Belgians who previously used the building as a colonial administrative seat, had seen fit to link the offices together in the back. That way, during a protest or time of unrest, they could simply close the main doors of each office and still move from office to office as freely as they needed to. It was quite ingenious Michonne had always thought. Colonizers frequently were.

She slowly kneed the drawer closed as quietly as she could, pulling a peppermint out of the top drawer as she turned around.

 _Of course it was Shane_.

"I'm waiting for Rick," She said casually, trying not to sound as caught as she felt.

"He and Aarav are escorting Francine to Kindu. She didn't tell you?" Shane frowned.

Michonne shook her head, no. _She did._

"But why are you sitting at my desk?"

Michonne unwrapped the peppermint candy she'd swiped at the last second and popped it into her mouth before answering. "You've got the candy."

She forced a smile waiting to see if Shane accepted that explanation.

"My desk wasn't open," He said walking over to her.

"Sure it was." She said getting up and easing by him as he closed in.

"No, it wasn't," He insisted, standing in front of his desk and examining the drawer. He looked at it suspiciously before looking up at her.

Michonne backed away and sat on the edge of Samir's desk opposite his. For some reason, she wanted to put a little distance between them.

"Then how could I have gotten this?" She answered easily, pointing at her bulging jaw.

Shane looked at her as if confounded by the question. He tried the desk again, opening and closing it. He reached in and took out something quickly, sticking it in the back pocket of his jeans before looking at her again askance.

"So was it something I could help you with?" He asked her then.

"What?" Michonne said caught off guard.

"You needed something, right? I wanted to know if it was something I could help you with instead...I mean since Rick's not here," He watched her closely as he spoke.

Michonne stood up then, feeling called out. If Shane had just openly said he didn't believe her story the message couldn't have been transmitted any clearer. Over the years, their relationship had always been more playfully antagonistic than anything but in the past few weeks, it had become much more like a cold war than Michonne cared to admit.

"No, no, nothing you could do, um, Security Director business, but thanks anyway," She said with an easy fake smile, hoping it would shut him down. From his face, though, it seemed as if she'd stuck a knife in him and twisted it. Shane's equally forced smile faltered briefly. His mouth became a tight line.

Though it had only ever been a Mission rumor, his behavior right then helped confirm it for Michonne. Clara had once told her that after the death of the previous security director, Shane had thought himself the assumed interim successor. As far as anyone was concerned including Shane, Rick had been entirely disinterested in the position. The scuttlebutt was, if Rick didn't want it, Shane as next in line in order of seniority and experience would be a shoe-in.

Still, somehow the job had gone to Rick anyway. Clara swore that development pained Shane, although she never explained how she knew that. But, Michonne hadn't considered it, never having seen any evidence that confirmed it was true. However, this was the first moment Michonne witnessed anything suggesting that the way it all panned out bothered Shane in the slightest.

"Well, I suppose you gotta wait until he gets back then."

"I suppose so." She nodded in agreement.

There was a pregnant pause that hung between them before Shane spoke again. "'Chonne, I know what you think and I think it's time we had it out. Don't go."

He sat down heavily in his chair. As he did, Michonne paused in her glacial slide toward the door, holding her breath. She rested against another desk without actually sitting on it. She seriously doubted he had any idea what she was thinking. She also didn't want to be taken in by Shane and his slick words but she couldn't deny he looked sincere. She struggled between granting his simple request and not wanting to still be standing there when and if he realized she really had popped the lock on his drawers.

"How's that?" She still found herself saying despite her weariness.

"I know you and I have very different opinions about things but I'd like to think there's a couple places where we agree?"

She plastered the most beatific smile she could muster onto her face waiting for him to continue.

"We both love Maggie and we both think that I should spend the rest of my life proving how much," Shane said with a self-deprecating smile. "And I will. I'll never hurt Maggie."

"I think we both know that's not true," She replied honestly. "You promised me you wouldn't hurt Andrea too."

"No, I didn't." He held up a finger in objection. "I promised to never _deliberately_ hurt Andrea."

"Well, then you failed on both counts," She retorted annoyed with his semantics.

Shane struggled to keep smiling. It seemed like they were both doing that.

"Well, Andrea was a rattlesnake when she got upset. There was no keeping a civil tongue with her. I know you know that too."

Despite her irritation with Shane on her friend's behalf, she did know that Andrea was her own kind of acquired taste. Her personality was strong like her opinions, neither of which she spared the people around her. Still, Shane had treated her shabbily after initially sweeping her off her feet.

After having seen him with prior and subsequent girlfriends Michonne was positive, being with Andrea had brought out the worst in him. It was true they brought out the worst in each other, really. So Andrea was perhaps not the best example of Shane as boyfriend material, but it didn't matter, she was the one that had been Michonne's friend. And if what happened with her was what awaited Maggie, Michonne could not truly give her blessing.

"Maggie's young and being impetuous and you are old enough to know better than to take advantage."

"Advantage?" Shane said seeming genuinely insulted. "First of all, that is not true. You've known her longer than me, when have you ever known Maggie to make an impulsive decision? And second, don't act like Maggie's a child. She's an adult who has been making decisions for herself for a few years now and has excellent judgement."

Michonne was stunned by how much of what Shane had just said was absolutely true. Suddenly, she felt like the one on the defensive.

"Do you think that I didn't have to have a very good argument for why we should get married _and_ a plan before she would say yes?" Shane smiled sincerely at the recollection.

Knowing how much time, consideration and energy had gone into just the decision of which college to attend, Michonne already knew the answer. She smiled at the thought of how much convincing Shane had probably had to do. "I suppose."

"So if you can't give me the benefit of the doubt, at least give it to Maggie," Shane said simply.

 _Well, what the hell could she say to that?_

Michonne fretted suddenly that she'd been making an ass of herself, with her suspicions and her passive-aggressive hostility. _Had that been what Rick was trying to gently tell her at the party?_ The prospect of that made her feel ill. She itched to get out of the room and regroup alone with her thoughts.

She nodded conceding Shane the point. He exhaled heavily as if Michonne's opinion had really been of worry to him.

"That's all I'm asking, gimme a chance to prove you wrong. If I don't, you can put one right here," He said laughing and putting his finger to his temple.

Michonne rolled her eyes.

"Listen, I gotta run," Michonne said feeling an unexpected twinge of guilt as she turned to leave. "I guess I'll catch you around, Frack."

"Seeya, Pretty Lady."

Michonne scoffed at the nickname, as she walked out feeling no more satisfied than when she'd entered but a lot more conflicted.

* * *

"I was surprised, he didn't have the stroke I thought he would," Maggie said sorting through clothes in the laundromat.

The place was empty and relatively quiet at this time of afternoon. That was why they liked to do their laundry at that time. Still, Maggie and Michonne spoke in hushed tones as if her father might come in at any moment and overhear them. More like, Maggie worried one of his surrogates at the Mission, like the people who told him she was dating Shane months before she told him herself, might be listening.

Michonne sat to the side watching her own load spin around and around in the wash machine. "I've always thought you guys don't give Hershel enough credit. He's overprotective yes, but he's no throwback."

Maggie stopped and turned to Michonne. "We're still talking about _my daddy_ , right?"

Michonne laughed. "Didn't you just say he didn't get upset?"

"No, _I said_ he didn't have an aneurysm. He's plenty upset alright. He wants Shane to present himself for inspection first thing when he gets back to the States. As if Shane hadn't already set up a dinner date on his calendar. As if Shane now has to pass muster. I tried to tell him we're in the twenty-first century. I don't have to get permission to accept a marriage proposal and Shane sure as shit doesn't need permission to ask."

"So how did that go over?" Michonne asked already feeling like she knew the answer. She watched the side of Maggie's face contort with irritation.

"That bad?" She laughed.

Maggie was silent for a moment at the folding table. From her seat Michonne, could only see her profile. "I said, 'That bad'?" Michonne repeated.

Maggie turned on her friend then, holding something up between her index and middle fingers.

"What's that?"

Maggie tossed it to her and Michonne caught it in surprise. It was a matchbook.

"Where'd you get this?"

Maggie held up a pair of Shane's jeans.

"What is it?" Michonne said not understanding.

"Open it," Maggie directed her.

Michonne did obediently and saw scribbled across the back a series of numbers and a name. "Who's Lausanne?"

"That's a question, isn't it?" Maggie said her mouth pursed in displeasure. "That's not even his handwriting."

Michonne flipped the matchbook over in her hands. The cover advertised a club with its address and phone number and a scantily clad woman spread across it. It wasn't new though. There were even a few matches missing. "There's no telling when this is from, Mag."

Michonne couldn't believe she was playing Devil's Advocate, but if she was honest, of Shane's myriad foibles, being a cheater wasn't really one of them. He was serially monogamous, he just ran through the women like tissue paper. But if he was still with Maggie then he was still with her and Michonne said as much.

"Honestly, every man has a roving eye, the world is fifty percent women, do we really expect them to walk through life with their eyes closed? I know I don't," Michonne reasoned absently. "It's all in whether they do anything about it."

She got up then and walked over to the folding tables next to Maggie, still staring at the matchbook and the writing inside.

"Rick's eyes don't wander," Maggie rebutted. "He only has eyes for one person."

Michonne nodded in agreement turning the object in question over again and again in her fingers. There was something about it that lay at the tip of her tongue, right outside of her reach. "True. And Lori's a very lucky woman, I've always said so."

Maggie sucked her teeth and pulled the matches out of Michonne's hand.

"What?" Michonne asked looking up at her in surprise.

"You're not paying attention. I'm worried, Mich."

"No, you're paranoid."

"I know you can't blame me. You're the one who's convinced he's gonna break my heart."

"Do not put words in my mouth, Maggie Greene."

"Hasn't that been your complaint since we started dating?"

"Yes, but not like this," Michonne said snatching the matchbook back from her, determined to keep it to prevent Maggie from spinning out. Her level of sudden preoccupation with this small thing reiterated for Michonne how much Maggie cared for Shane. "Forget about this. I'm not sure how but those matches are familiar to me."

"Was this somewhere you went with him?" Maggie said hopefully.

Michonne shook her head looking at it again, that she was certain of. _Club Moto_ was, according to the address on the backside, in Goma nearly 500 kilometers away and more importantly, out of bounds.

"So you really don't think this is anything?" Maggie asked pulling the jeans to her chest.

"Nope. Whoever Lausanne is she's in his past…"

"I'm tempted to call the number."

Michonne shook her head. "Don't be that girl."

She looked between the front cover and the inscription for the tenth time, when something came to her. "Plus, this isn't a phone number."

"What?" Maggie said surprised. "How do you know?"

Michonne leaned forward and flipped the cover back and forth for Maggie as she had been a minute earlier. "There are too many digits, see? There are 11 digits not nine and the first one is a 'B' not an eight. So it can't even be international," She pointed out.

Maggie took a deep breath and cracked a relieved smile. "I guess Shane's off the hook for now."

Michonne handed the book of matches back to Maggie and watched her slip it into her back pocket before returning to her sorting.

That's when it came to Michonne. _That was where she'd seen the matchbook before._

It was one of the odds and ends she'd found in Shane's desk drawer at work. He'd taken it out in front of her and stuck it in his back pocket before she could see what it was. Suddenly, Michonne was more curious than Maggie about Lausanne.

 _Who the hell was Lausanne and what the hell did she have to do with Shane?_


	22. Chapter 22

***** **Author's Note** *****

As I mentioned before the time jumps around a bit but I don't want people to get confused. So, to be clear, the first part of this is _before_ Michonne regains consciousness. Also, this chapter clocks in at a paltry 1900 words and you know what that means...double update!

7/27/15 03:53 EET

Cruising Altitude - 37,000 ft. above sea level ( _100mi east of Adana, Turkey)_

The light flashed into his eyes, testing the reaction of his pupils.

"Do we have to do this?" Rick asked trying to control his anxiety. He'd changed out of his wet clothes and now was being forced to endure a checkup from Rosita. She kneeled in front of his face flashing Daryl's obscenely bright penlight before his eyes.

"You took a nasty spill and no one checked you out. I checked Daryl and I checked Sasha. You're not exempt from a coma. I leave you alone," She said feeling through his scalp for bumps, abrasions or lacerations with her fingers, checking the back of his skull and neck. "And the next thing we know, you fall asleep here and never wake up."

Rick rolled his eyes. "I'm fine."

"Yes, you are," She said finally, satisfied.

She released him and sat back on her heels in front of him.

"How's she?" He asked softly.

Rosita's voice was somber, her face severe. "It's not good."

"Tell me," Rick demanded, trying to brace himself.

"Without medical attention, she's gonna die."

Despite his best efforts, Rick was still not ready to hear that. "No."

"Look, I can't tell how bad her internal injuries are," Rosita said. "Sasha's the trauma nurse and she won't be any good to anyone until the meds wear off in another couple hours."

Rick looked over at the Sergeant sleeping fitfully on a pallet in the corner cradling her arm.

"That's time Michonne may not have."

"So what can we do?" Rick asked trying to keep the desperation out of his voice.

Rosita shrugged. "Short of a hospital, I really don't know."

"I may know of a hospital, well, not a hospital but a medical facility," Milton interjected from his seat not far from them. "One that should at least have the equipment you need if you know how to use it. And it's only five hours away."

"Five hours? Does she have five hours?" Rick looked at Rosita, who shrugged.

"I can't promise anything, but if she regains consciousness again, I think we might have a good shot."

"Five hours is better than the eight to Korea, right? To get to a place which may not have any of the medical equipment or medical personnel left or might have been completely looted or overrun by now? The place I'm talking about I can guarantee is a sealed facility."

Rick moved toward Mamet with suspicion. "What facility is this?"

"I-it's a Black site. That's all I can say," Milton explained nervously, sensing Rick's mood.

"You might as well spill it, Doc. You've already told us the juiciest bit," Rosita said coming up behind Rick.

"How the hell do you know about a CIA Black Site?"

"It's not CIA. It's a USAMRIID Black site, where they keep all the really nasty stuff. The level 5 biological pathogens."

"There's no such thing as 'Level Five'," Rick and Rosita both said at the same time.

"Jinx," Milton said chuckling to himself, to which neither of their hard expressions changed.

Mamet cleared his throat feeling the full intensity of their glares on him. He cradled his broken forearm in its sling protectively before continuing. "Well obviously, I'm telling you there is."

"And how do you know about it?" Rick asked.

Milton seemed annoyed at the question. "I work in the upper echelons of Epidemiology, Virology and Parasitology research. I've consulted with the NIH, CDC, National Institute for Biological Standards and Control in the UK and Public Health Agency of Swe—"

"Doctor, do either of us look like we give two-shits about your CV?" Rosita cut him off, folding her arms.

"And neither does the Army. If you'd worked at a so-called 'Level Five facility', your work would never have seen the light of day. You wouldn't be published, you would be anonymous, a complete unknown. They'd have thrown your ass down the same black hole as those germs. So, I'm gonna give you one last shot at this." Rick grabbed Milton by the collar and pulled him up out of his seat threateningly, his other hand balling into a fist as he spoke.

"Fine _, fine_ , my brother has clearance," Milton cringed. "He told me."

"Who's your brother?" Rosita asked and Rick shook him a little, hoping to shake the truth loose.

"General Claremont."

"Bullshit, you say." Daryl cut in, coming out of the cockpit.

"It's true _. Philip B. Claremont_. He's Philip _Blake_ Claremont, I'm Milton _Blake_ Mamet. We have different fathers. Our mother remarried after Philip's father, Brian, died."

"And he just _tells_ you top secret information?" Glenn asked, joining the group surrounding Mamet.

Milton bristled with irritation pulling himself away from Rick and accidentally falling back down into his seat as they loomed.

"First of all, I _have_ top secret clearance myself, just not to that level. And second, that's my field. If he needs an expert opinion or something explained to him, who better to do it than someone he trusts completely? My brother's not one to sit by and let someone tell him they've got to bomb someone for having enriched uranium cake and he just go along with it. Not because he doesn't understand what they're talking about but he's too proud to say so. He's gonna ask questions."

Rosita smirked at that.

"So do you want to try and save Ms. Philippe or do you want to ask me more of these inane little questions?"

"Fine. So where's the site, Doc?" Daryl asked.

"Rwanda."

All the eyes that had been on Milton turned back toward Rick.

He knew what they were asking. This wouldn't just be a slight deviation. This would be a directly contravening order. They would be going in the opposite direction of their supposed destination. All to save _two_ people, while the fate of the rest of humanity might hang in the balance. No one had to say the words to Rick, he knew it. This was short-sighted selfishness. They'd been out of radio contact with their HQ almost since they'd left US airspace but the lack of oversight didn't make the decision easier. Rick looked at the people around him. He owed it to them to make the correct choice now. Still, he knew somehow that whatever he decided, they'd be on board.

Michonne moaned painfully then, in her sleep, giving him his answer. "Do it."

"Okay girl, it's time to make a U-Turn," Daryl announced loudly walking back toward the cockpit.

Rick's eyes closed as he felt like his world was suddenly coming full circle.

* * *

08:02 CAT

"Are _you_ okay? That's the more important question," Rick asked placing a kiss on the top of Michonne's head amongst her downy locs.

"Everything hurts."

"I know. Do you remember what happened?"

Michonne shook her head gingerly. "I told Tobin we should try to fly to a rendezvous point and meet up with you."

"Yep," Rick confirmed.

"It didn't work, did it?"

"No, no, it did...kinda," He offered encouragingly. "But you were hurt."

He deliberately avoided mentioning Tobin.

"Doctor Mamet?" Michonne asked anxiously.

"I'm here, Ms. Philippe."

Rick looked up at Milton trying not to be irritated that Mamet was once again eavesdropping. Yet, it was his previous eavesdropping that just might save Michonne's life. And he was still the star of this show, whether anyone wanted him to be or not.

"I can't see you," Michonne struggled to sit up, crying out at each attempt.

Rick sat up and slowly pulled Michonne to a sitting position. To his surprise, some of his own limbs were numb after keeping her in his arms for three uninterrupted hours. He stayed at her back and he propped her up against his chest.

"Easy," He said as he positioned her. "That okay?"

She nodded, hissing through her teeth. "Yes."

Rosita watched them both carefully from her position on the other side of the plane tending to Sasha, who had just begun to rouse herself.

Rick took a deep breath and exhaled for what felt like the first time in hours. Despite all appearances and common sense, he couldn't shake the feeling that things were looking up again. Both Sasha and Michonne were conscious when it had seemed touch and go for both of them. For hours, unconcerned with what it would look like to the others, Rick lay with Michonne in his arms so that he could be there if his worst nightmare occurred. Though he had hoped and fervently prayed that she would awaken, he knew that might not happen and he could not have lived with himself if he hadn't been there for that moment. Holding her in the moment when the world officially ended for him was all that had mattered.

Now that she was awake however, he was determined to fix it. Fix her, fix Sasha if he could, fix it all.

"That's a very interesting plan of yours, Dr. Mamet," Michonne was saying when Rick's mind stopped wandering. Glenn and Jesus sat nearby listening as well.

"Well, it's both mine and Captain Grimes', the whole crew's really. We all feel you are an invaluable asset and if we must detour however briefly to make sure you and Sgt. Williams are alright, then that's what we'll do."

"Thank you," Michonne said sincerely, looking at the people near her. She then placed her hand over Rick's on her arm.

She squeezed it hard, surprisingly so, and in that way voiced her displeasure. Rick smiled. She wouldn't be her if she'd thought this plan had any merit at all. As far as she was concerned, he was certain, they should have left her to bleed out at the crash site in order to get Mamet to North Korea.

"We can argue about it later," He whispered in her ear just loudly enough for her to hear.

"You mean we _will_ argue about this later," She replied through gritted teeth.

Rick couldn't tell if the growl was from annoyance or pain, either of which was fine with him. Just the amount of steely displeasure in that sentence, made his heart soar.

 _That's right. She could get pissy with him later, just so long as there was a later._

"All right everybody, put your head between your knees and kiss your asses goodbye!" Carol called out from the cockpit.

"ETA: 40 minutes," Daryl came to the door of the cabin and announced.

Carol pulled up the cabin lights and everyone squinted under the brightness.

Rick looked around and took a quick survey. They were down two people but up three more. Three of their crew were badly injured but on the mend. They weren't any closer to what they set out looking for than when they started twenty-four hours earlier, but he was still alive. Michonne was still alive and Mamet, with the possible key to the whole mess in his brain, was still alive. They had lived to fight another day and he knew as long as he and Michonne were still breathing, nothing was over yet.


	23. Chapter 23

May 5th, 2011

Kisangani DRC

"The point is that had to be the mangiest cat I have ever seen in my life," Michonne said after taking a big swig from her glass of Merlot. "I can't believe you managed to keep it hidden from your Residence Advisor. Did they ever catch on that you were hiding a stray in your dorm room?"

She sat cross-legged on Maggie's living room floor between her couch and the coffee table. Her elbows were on the table, next to her wineglass and their abandoned game of Monopoly, which was spread all across it.

" _The point,"_ Maggie continued her explanation, ignoring Michonne's question from her position comfortably nestled with her feet tucked under her up on the couch. "Is he didn't look like that when I was done with him."

"No, the point is, he ended up in the pound anyway." Michonne laughed. "I mean what's the point of rescuing a cat you're just gonna take back to the shelter?"

"I didn't take him _back_ to the pound. I found him on the street. I rehabilitated him and then took him to a shelter where I know they found him a good home," Maggie clarified.

"Where you _hope_ they found him a good home."

"It was a no-kill shelter, Michonne. I know that they found him a home," She huffed. "Anyway, what's your point? I mean ultimately?"

Michonne laughed. She hadn't meant to irritate her but from Maggie's face it was clear she was well on her way. It wasn't probably the best plan now to continue down this road. Michonne was a little tipsy but not yet drunk enough to not see how comparing Shane to a mangy cat wasn't a great idea. She'd intended only to offer up an example of how loving and dutiful Maggie could be but now she needed to back peddle fast.

"Um, just that you were better to that darned cat than to little Bethie." She said thinking on her feet.

"Beth was a complete pain, honestly she's still a pain in the butt. She's lucky I didn't put _her_ in the pound when we were little." Maggie frowned. "As it was, I did try to return her to the store once."

"Aww, you didn't!" Michonne giggled. "But Bethie's so sweet."

"I did."

Michonne swatted at her friend's thigh playfully from her position at her feet.

"One day when she was about four, my mama took us down to Hecht's. Now, that's where my Daddy had told me we got Beth from. So I took the opportunity while Mama's back was turned to take her over to the Returns counter and get our money back." Maggie smiled and gave a little unremorseful shrug that caused Michonne to laugh hysterically.

"I know you got in trouble."

"I received a very stern talking-to from Dad over the phone. Luckily for me, he happened to be in Delhi at the time."

Michonne continued laughing far more tickled than she might normally be imagining it. In her merriment; however, she accidentally overturned her glass of wine on the coffee table.

"Oh shoot!" She exclaimed hopping to her feet, but not in time to stop the majority of the glass' contents from spilling into her lap.

"And that's the ballgame, folks. It's clearly time I took my drunk butt home," Michonne said attempting to sop up the liquid with anything she could grab including the play money strewn across the table.

Maggie ran to her kitchen and back, handing Michonne a kitchen towel. "Here. Listen, do you want to stay over?"

"What, on your couch? Nope," Michonne answered bluntly. "I'm drunk but I'm not _that_ drunk yet."

With marked effort on both their sides in the past week or so, the recent frost between Shane and her was thawing but not quite that much.

"Actually, when he gets home from hanging with Rick and the guys, Shane's looking at making up the couch for himself. So you can stay in the bedroom with me, if you want." The smile she'd sported all evening fell from Maggie's face as she read Michonne's mind.

"What?" Michonne huffed with fatigue. "What's going on now, Maggie?"

If Michonne didn't know better she would have thought Maggie was training a dog instead of marrying a man. Shane was constantly being taught one lesson or another- although admittedly he seemed to love it. Michonne had not known Hershel well when his wife Annette was alive, but to hear the stories she could be quite a taskmaster and he a real rascal. So apparently, the fruit hadn't fallen far from the tree.

Maggie looked at Michonne guiltily. "I asked him about Lausanne."

Michonne plopped deflated onto the couch with the rag still in her hand. "Seriously? Oh Maggie, you didn't."

Maggie crossed her arms over chest defiantly but her lips quivered with indecision.

"It was killing me, Michonne. Not knowing, wondering if she was someone he was seeing recently or…" She trailed off knowing that Michonne understood the worry-spiral she wound down into.

"I told you, it was a long time ago. That club's been closed for a year."

Maggie looked at her and Michonne realized she'd just given away the fact that she'd done a little investigating of her own.

"He said that. But we got into this big fight before he'd even admit it. At first, he wouldn't even acknowledge he knew her then he wanted to know where I got that name from. Oh my God, it was ugly! I almost left him right then and there!"

Michonne shook her head, surprised by her twinge of sympathy for Shane. In her digging, she discovered Club Moto had been closed since last spring when the renewed fighting between the rebels and the Rwandan government forces had escalated along the border. What Shane would have been doing over there back then was anyone's guess. Michonne knew Goma had been known previously for a thriving nightlife but only the brave, and foolish, ventured over that way now.

"Maggie, who's to say he didn't inherit that matchbook from someone else with some old conquest's phone number already in it?" Michonne posited, playing Devil's Advocate yet again for her.

"To be honest, I could have accepted that but nowhere in all his evasions did he suggest that at all." Maggie came and sat next to Michonne, her big eyes appealing to her friend's common sense. "First, he didn't have any clue what I was talking about, then it was a long time ago and he couldn't be expected to remember. Then, it was all this indignation that I was snooping through his things, which as you know, I was not."

Maggie sighed, "At no point did he suggest the simplest thing...that he'd found or gotten the matchbook somewhere and he wasn't sure what was in or on it."

Michonne didn't know what to say. Maggie had him dead to rights. She was suddenly reminded why Maggie was so excellent at her job as an investigator.

"...Right now, Mich, it's not even about the stupid matches anymore. I'm pissed that he thinks he can get away with lying to me. We _don't_ lie to each other. I can't marry a liar. That's not going to be acceptable. So he's on the couch for a few days until that penetrates his skull."

Maggie sighed again heavily. They sat silently for a minute before Michonne spoke.

"Well, now you give me all that context, I _definitely_ don't want to stay over the night," She deadpanned to Maggie's delight.

They both laughed.

"You sure?" Maggie asked again when Michonne rose to gather up her purse and other things.

"Yeah, I've got work waiting for me at home anyway."

"Oh well, it's probably for the best anyway. I told Shane that I'd talked to you about it and he really flipped his shit. He probably thinks you hate him even more now."

"Gee, thanks gorgeous, for putting me in the middle of your argument."

"I really didn't mean to," Maggie admitted contritely. "Especially given the way you two have been behaving."

"And how have we been acting?" Michonne walked out Maggie's front door and then turned to face her in the hall.

"Honestly? Like two big babies fighting over their favorite toy."

"You're the toy in this offensive analogy?" Michonne put her hand on her hip and stared her friend down.

"Well, yeah." Maggie leaned a shoulder against the doorframe.

Michonne frowned, her buzz making that comment dig at her perhaps more than it might have normally.

"I'm genuinely sorry if you feel that way. But he and I came to an understanding just last week. It's too bad you didn't get the memo. From now on, I'm staying out of grown folks business," Michonne said snidely, gesturing with her hands as if she were washing them of the whole affair.

"Mich, don't leave angry. I didn't mean anything."

"Sure you did, _In Vino Veritas_ , right? I think you meant exactly what you said. Again, I apologize if we made you feel that way... and you know what? You're absolutely correct. You are a grown woman and you don't need a mother hen clucking around. As I said I made my peace with your decision—"

"Wait," Maggie straightened her posture and held up a hand incredulously. "'Your _peace_?' You've made your peace with it? You're acting like I'm throwing my life away."

Michonne realized belatedly that she should have quit while she was ahead. How many times in how many different ways was she going to insult Shane _and_ Maggie by telling them they were making a big mistake? At the rate she was going currently, she'd be lucky to get a wedding invitation.

"I misspoke," Michonne said quickly. "Look, it's late and we've been drinking. Let's stop now before we say something we regret."

"So you don't regret what you just said?" Maggie needled her. Maggie was known to get argumentative when she had been drinking.

Michonne sighed, struggling not to really lose her patience. "Frankly, I don't. Shane's a good guy. I have never ever said otherwise…."

"But…?"

Michonne took a deep breath.

 _No no no no no, not this again_ , her brain screamed at her while the words still bubbled up in her throat.

Just three days ago, she'd had to sit and listen while Hershel fretted for over an hour. He'd found out Maggie intended to leave the UN at the conclusion of her current assignment and for some reason Michonne—unofficial Greene daughter number three—bore the brunt. But she'd done it, and without further revealing Shane's utterly ridiculous plan to take over their family farm. Rick and Maggie both swore her to secrecy and Michonne had been a loyal friend. As far as Michonne was concerned now, she'd done her part to support their relationship— against her better judgment even. Still, if she and Maggie didn't tread lightly with each other, she would soon be foregoing the whole friendship, let alone just a wedding invite.

"...Maybe you need to wait a little longer? You've only been together six months." She finally answered delicately, but honestly.

"My mama and daddy met on a Friday night and we're engaged by the following Thursday. I think Shane and I are showing restraint, actually."

It was Michonne's turn to sigh. She had heard that infamous story before. Hershel had wondered aloud at his daughter's impulsiveness in her decision to marry. But Michonne knew, to find its origin, one need only wind back to that little chestnut Hershel loved to share to find the answer. He told that story to _anyone_ who would listen.

"The last bus to Tshopo leaves at quarter after 10, so I'd better scoot. The last thing I need is to hear Rick's mouth about having to drive me home tonight," Michonne announced, effectively cutting off further discussion.

"Get home safe." Maggie said wanly as Michonne stepped up to give her a perfunctory hug, that she stiffly endured.

Even though she was certain they would be talking again by tomorrow afternoon, passing notes to each other in the weekly staff meeting like a pair of high schoolers, in the moment Michonne couldn't help her irritation. As she walked down the hall, she heard Maggie's door close behind her. Normally, Maggie stood in the doorway and waited until Michonne reached to stairwell before doing that. There were clearly hurt feelings on both sides. And yet by the time she exited the building and was headed toward the bus station, Michonne already resolved to call and apologize for her priggishness. She pulled her phone out of her pocketbook, looking down at it as she walked down the quiet block.

"Michonne!" A familiar voice called out from behind as she made her way down the street.

As Michonne paused and turned toward the sound, hands seized her. A short burly man came out from the darkened corner of a shuttered storefront. She attempted to scream just as large hard hands clamped over her mouth and arms, encircling her. She flailed wildly as the arms tried lifting her off her feet. She kicked hard at the knee cap of the solidly-built man that held her. He cried out in pain but only tightened his hold on her. She threw her head back connecting with his nose. The softness of her locs prevented her from breaking it as Shane had taught her but she knew it had hurt nonetheless. He dropped her, staggering back in a brief daze.

As soon as her feet hit the pavement, she ran. In her panic, she'd lost her sense of where she was. She just took off in a direction. But rounding the corner, she instantly recognized the bakery shop there. Seeing the bakery told her exactly where she was headed. Rick's apartment was a block away. Michonne ran looking behind her every few moments to make sure her mugger wasn't following. So far the street was eerily silent but clear.

With little more than fifty feet to the building's entrance and safety, a car door opened clotheslining her. Michonne flew back, landing splayed across the cement pavement, cracking her head hard. She literally saw stars for a moment, burning across her irises. Rough hands grabbed handfuls of her hair, yanking her back to her feet. She cried out in pain and a hand slapped her harshly. Next, she received a bruising body-blow designed to keep her quiet.

"Shut up." A voice instructed sternly.

Michonne had difficulty focusing on the face attached to the voice. Her vision blurred with pain and tears. But she knew he was larger than her original assailant.

 _Two of them_ , she dismayed. This was not just a garden-variety mugging.

"You don't want to do this." She tried to reason when she could finally gasp out a breath to speak.

*Didn't I tell you to shut your mouth?* He said in French. He struck her back-handed with such force she was propelled into the side of the car nearest them at the curb. She hit it hard and slid to the ground bonelessly.

As Michonne's face hit the pavement yet again, she saw another pair of feet join her assailant's.

"Not here!" A new voice chastised the old one in a low tone. "How'd she even get over here?"

*Baptiste let her get away.*

"She conscious?" The voice asked continuing to speak in English while the brute responded in French.

He bent over her then and if Michonne could have, it would have been a perfect moment to lash out— scratch, kick, claw. As it was, however, she felt like the fight had been beaten out of her. The small amount of energy she had left she focused on remaining conscious. She'd taken three hard blows to the head and face. What she could still see had narrowed to pinpricks as her face grew swollen, looking up from the ground. After being manhandled by guys twice her size, she was groggy, disoriented and could barely move.

*Nope.* Her attacker replied easily after a cursory glance at her limp body shrouded in darkness behind the car. *You're lucky I was waiting here for you or she would have made it to the door. Bitch is fast and slippery, like a puss back foot.*

"Like a _what_? You know what? I don't even care. Just get her up and into the trunk before someone fuckin' sees us." The new voice grumbled. "That's the last thing I need. Negan promised guys that could handle a simple damn job and y'all fuck it up."

A third pair of feet joined them hurriedly, bending to gather her up and over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

"RI—!" Michonne tried to scream one last time as loudly as she could muster before something hard came down on the back of her head, silencing her.

As she blacked out, she heard one last exchange. "Shit! I thought you said she was unconscious? Did she see my face?"

*What does it matter?* The other answered nonchalantly. *We're just gonna kill her anyway, right?*


	24. Chapter 24

7/27/15 08:20 CAT

 _Cruising Altitude - 25,000 ft. above sea level_

Rick sat in the jumpseat closest to Michonne's pallet as the plane began its descent. He tried to maintain the same hopeful feeling he'd had when she initially woke up but it was growing harder. The bleakness of reality and the gravity of this situation repeatedly won out over any residual optimism. Michonne and Sasha were both awake but their circumstances were still dire. Sasha had lost a lot of blood and the battlefield transfusion she got from Daryl was a stop-gap not a solution. Meanwhile Michonne, though she was awake and oriented, was still seriously injured.

"I still don't understand how we intend to get in." Rhee whispered to Sgt. Espinosa.

Normally, there would have been no way Rick could've heard it. Over the ambient noises of the cargo plane and the other discussions happening around him, it should have been nearly impossible to hear whispers but it was eerily quiet right then. Complete silence, seemingly within the plane and outside facilitated the confirmation. Rick wasn't the only one losing faith mere hours after making their fateful decision.

"Pvt. Rhee, under the current circumstances, my clearance should get us in the door." Dr. Mamet spoke up from his seat across from them.

" _Under the circumstances?_ What, the end of the world? There was an 'End of the world' clause in your clearance application?"

"In a word, yes," Dr. Mamet said with surprising confidence. "In a, forgive me, 'doomsday scenario' my clearance would grant me access to many facilities and outposts."

"You hope," Glenn leaned forward and looked around then like he was wondering if everyone else had lost their minds to not be questioning this as well. "We're assuming somebody's alive in there to let us in. I'm sorry but has anyone else noticed that that hasn't been the case elsewhere?"

"Excuse you, I think we rolled out the fuckin' red carpet for you guys at Incirlik." Rosita turned on Glenn right beside her, skewering him with an incredulous look. She slapped a palm against his chest, pushing him back in his seat. "And I'm pretty sure the Captain gave everybody the opportunity to voice their concerns _five hours ago_."

Glenn deflated visibly at her words. "I'm just saying, we're not even sure we're going to the right place, right?" He sulked, sinking back against the seat.

"Is that true?" Michonne, who Rick hadn't even realized was paying attention, turned her head toward him from her place reclined on the pallet. "Do you not even know where this place _is_?"

Rick was no dictator. He neither needed nor wanted people blindly following him. But he realized right then, he needed Rhee to just shut the hell up and get with the program. Sudden uncertainty filled Michonne's eyes, indicating that even though she had objected to this plan before, she had still been with him. _Up until about a minute ago_ , he bristled _._ Now she doubted. Now she would worry when she needed to spend her time calm and untroubled, concentrated on healing.

He glared at the Private for a moment before turning back to Michonne.

"Milton wasn't sure exactly where the facility was. We tried to reach Claremont and the Ticonderoga but we couldn't. But after a while I realized I might have a good idea where it was myself."

Michonne looked at him questioningly. "What? How?"

"Well, I didn't _know_ exactly, but I suddenly remembered that trip we took to Cyangugu." Rick referred to an infamous fishing trip he and Shane had managed to drag her on just before she transferred to Kisangani. She was so angry at the end of that journey she almost called Stavros and told him she'd changed her mind about the job. "Do you remember it?"

"Yes," She said icily, rolling her eyes as he smiled, despite the serious subject matter.

"Remember when Walter took us sightseeing?" Rick asked though he knew she had to remember that nausea-inducing flight the tour guide slash bush-pilot slash coffee plantation owner took them on over the lake and into the national park.

"I can barely fly on small planes anymore," She admitted breathily.

 _It was a balancing act._ Michonne winced, fighting to maintain a joking demeanor as she listened to his explanation while Rick pretended he didn't notice her hiding her continued pain.

"On that flight there was a moment where we accidentally entered restricted air space."

Michonne scrunched her nose in confusion and Rick smiled pleased that even in her current condition Michonne was, as always, firing on all cylinders.

"That's what I thought too. And Walter was shocked," Rick confirmed her unspoken question. "Said he'd been using that flight path for years and that was the first time he'd ever been warned off by air traffic control."

Rwanda's Air Force was fledgling before the civil war and genocide then nearly decimated afterward. That fact left it highly unlikely there was restricted air space within its borders for their use. On the other hand, for the purpose of hiding a highly secure American facility like the one Milton had described, that would make a lot of sense.

"Where?" Michonne asked eagerly, clearly intrigued by the mystery.

"Between _Karengera_ and _Gisuma_."

Michonne groaned. Rick's brows furrowed in concern. "Do you need something for the pain from Rosita?"

"No." She shifted gingerly on the pallet, bringing her hands up to cover her face. "This is stupid but I miss my coffee!"

They both knew that that area of southwest Rwanda was known for their coffee plantations and growers.

Rick laughed. "I admit I haven't had a good cup since I left these parts."

"Between Colombia and the DRC, it's ruined me for any of the dishwater they serve in the States," She admitted.

Rick unbuckled his seatbelt and came so close he could whisper right in her ear. She gave him an embarrassed grin as he grew closer, clearly confused by what he was about to do. "Are you seriously telling me you're a _coffee_ snob too?"

Though he couldn't see the color rise in the apples of her cheeks he knew it was just from her expression and the way, for a moment, her eyes averted his gaze.

"Are you seriously still collecting my faults?"

Rick nodded.

"Your _flaws_ ," He corrected. "And yes I am. You have so few. Just continuing to confirm you're human."

She grinned bashfully, nervously smoothing down the white flat sheet that covered her.

"You mean the fact that I'm busy over here slowly bleeding to death didn't confirm that for you?" She asked wryly.

In that moment Rick didn't appreciate her gallows humor. The smile fell from his face. "You're gonna be okay."

"I know," She answered assuredly. "Now get back in your seat before Captain Douglas bounces you around this cabin."

Rick's expression didn't change as he obeyed, deciding again to keep her in the dark about Tobin's death. He looked up as he slipped back into his seat and saw Milton looking intently at him. His habit of eavesdropping was really starting to irk Rick. He could see in the way Mamet pushed his glasses up his nose and looked away that he didn't approve of Rick's small deception. But right now he was unwilling to do anything that could potentially hinder Michonne's recovery. Letting her know that her plan had cost someone their life was out of the question.

"Not long now." He reiterated more for himself than her.

* * *

08:57 CAT

Medical Station Omicron ( _12.5mi west of Karengera, Rwanda)_

As he suspected, after a visual survey of the land just outside of the town Karengera, there was a small private airstrip with its own unmanned air traffic control tower. The runway was entirely clear and there didn't seem to be a moving object for miles in any direction. A few hundred feet from the tarmac lay a large but nondescript, windowless steel and concrete structure. In the United States, it would hardly have caused anyone to blink twice, but ten miles outside of the small agrarian community of Karengera, it was entirely incongruous. For once things seemed to be going smoothly and according to plan. Rick knew well enough not to trust it.

Carol reported that both the ATIS and NOTAM notifications for pilots had been abandoned days ago. In the cockpit, while the others gathered up their equipment minutes later, Rick sought clarification. He spoke under his breath trying not to worry anyone within possible earshot.

"LT, what did you mean by _days_ ago?"

Lieutenant Peletier came closer, understanding his intent and whispered, "I was confused by this myself given what's happened but it looks like no one's been here for at least the past _five_ _days._ "

Carol's face was grim as she explained. "Those messages should be getting updated every few hours. But the last message playing here is from the evening of the 22nd...almost a full week _before_ the outbreak."


	25. Chapter 25

May 6th, 2011

Kisangani DRC

Michonne's head swam as she opened her eyes in the dark room. She sat up painfully touching a hand to the back of her neck. She could feel the swell of a knot and tenderness of the flesh at the base of her skull. She didn't know where she was but the intense quiet that surrounded her let her know she wasn't in Kisangani anymore. There was nowhere in the city that was this dark or quiet at anytime of day or night. She could hear crickets chirping and owls hooting in the distance. Looking at the one beam of light that shone high on the wall opposite her, she saw bars on the windows.

She was in some sort of cell. Her heart jumped, beating a frantic staccato in her chest at the realization. This wasn't a mistake and she hadn't suddenly fallen ill and been rushed to a hospital. She was a prisoner. She stood up realizing her bedding was in a corner on the floor and went to the high window. On her tiptoes, all she could make out was the night sky and the forest canopy. Flood lights shone at the corners and she could just make out the top of a chain link fence but nothing in the way of direction or landmarks revealed themselves. She was on a compound of some sort. Reaching up so that she could look at her watch face by the light that shone into her space, she saw it was three-fifty in the morning.

She'd been missing for hours, but during a time when not one of her friends would be any the wiser. She'd been snatched off a neighborhood street and taken somewhere but no one might realize until hours from now. These were the things that did happen to people, she tried to remind herself, had happened to UN employees in the course of their assignments. It was relatively commonplace in particularly war-torn regions. Michonne shuddered remembering what had become of an investigator during her brief time in Colombia. Her stomach turned violently recalling the reported condition of his body when it had been recovered. Suddenly, Rick's frequent admonitions discouraging her from her decision to live so far from the Mission came back to her, like a smack in the face. She'd been so foolish.

 _Rick._

For some reason, Michonne's mind strayed to him. Even as she feared for herself, she was saddened by the idea of how upset he would be when he found out. She'd always known, in her heart of hearts, that he would blame himself if anything ever happened to her. Instead of laying the blame where it belonged, with her and the hubris inherent in her decision to live miles away, he would think of all the ways he could have tried to do something. Just the idea of it upset Michonne enough to bring tears to her eyes.

 _Why hadn't she just listened to him?_

For hours, Michonne sat in the darkness on straw bedding and tried to piece together what happened until the first lights of dawn began to replace the artificial ones. She didn't even know who would have wanted to take her. In this part of the world, professional ransom operations were rare to nonexistent. Whoever had taken the time to kidnap her must have had a personal stake in harming her. The idea of that made her predicament even more frightening. Still, she had no clues to whom that might be. She couldn't even really retrace her steps directly preceding it. She remembered leaving Maggie's house, a little more tipsy than usual, and walking toward the bus station but that was as far as her recollections would carry her. Something had happened along the way, but what? The ache in her head suggested some things but the fact that her clothing was entirely intact refuted others.

At eight by her watch, the door to her cell finally opened and Ariane ducked in with a makeshift wooden tray. Michonne was startled.

"Ariane?" She said still trying to piece things together in her mind. "What are —"

The girl balanced the tray in one arm and used the other hand to bring a finger to her lips.

Michonne closed her mouth immediately, watching as Ariane entered and placed the tray at her feet.

Kneeling down, she dipped a rag into a small bowl and then wrung it out.

"Shhh," she said as she brought the rag to Michonne's forehead. It was unexpectedly cool and smelled comfortingly of fragrant herbs. Michonne closed her eyes drawing comfort from the young girl's delicate touch.

"DaDa's men brought you here," She whispered into Michonne's ear as she leaned forward to move the rag to the knot on the back of her head.

"What!" Michonne was certain she didn't understand what she had just been told.

"Shhh!" Ariane said again insistently. "You must pretend you do not know what is going on."

"But I don't," Michonne whispered, near tears. If she had been baffled before she was badly flummoxed now.

"DaDa thinks that you know about his business about where his money is hidden. That you were going to tell them everything and that DaDa's arrangement with the soldiers would soon be discovered."

This was news to Michonne; she knew of no money.

"Ariane, I don't know what you're talking about," Michonne maintained, further distressed.

Ariane looked surprised but recovered quickly. "Then we must figure out how to do something...and for that we need time."

"Do you have a phone?" Michonne whispered. To which Ariane shook her head.

"Can you get a message to the Mission?"

"They watch too close now. I rarely get out of the camp anymore."

"Could you get a message out?" Michonne found herself nearly begging.

"I can try. But to do that I need time. You don't have any time," Ariane said gravely.

Tears sprang to Michonne's eyes. So she wasn't mistaken about why she was here. She was to be like her colleague in Colombia. Just a body that eventually washed up, perhaps on the shores of the Tshopo right near her own home. Her eyes pleaded with the young girl even though she imagined there was little she could do.

"You've got to help me. I can't die here."

"I will try," Ariane whispered patting her shoulder.

Taking one glance behind her, Ariane pushed Michonne back, placing her hand firmly in her chest and encouraging her to lie back on the bedding. After a brief silence where Ariane seemed to contemplate Michonne's words, she spoke again but now in French.

*You must be ill.*

Michonne's face must have been a question mark even as she allowed Ariane to position her back in bed. The girl shot her an intent look, beseeching Michonne to play along. She deliberately spoke loudly enough to be overheard by whoever waited for her in the hall.

*When was the last time you had the curse?*

Michonne was completely lost. Ariane seemed to understand Michonne's confusion but continued on undeterred. She picked the plate of food up off the tray and tried to spoon feed her. At first, Michonne resisted. Clamping her mouth shut until Ariane frowned, gesturing with her head and eyes toward the door. Someone was watching.

*Are you sure? I will have Mama Oné come and visit you, to make sure you are alright then.* Ariane said in answer to nothing.

Michonne remained silent and watched as Ariane seemed to carry on both sides of a conversation alone.

"Shhh, shhh." She coaxed Michonne's mouth open and shoveled food in as she hummed. *Nevermind, don't worry.*

Ariane fed Michonne for a bit longer before packing up her tray. Michonne watched the girl carefully, curious to why she was being nursed in that way. Rubbing a comforting hand down Michonne's face as if they had suddenly transposed ages, Ariane bend forward as if to kiss Michonne's cheek. Bringing her lips instead to Michonne's ears, she whispered.

"I hope you have had your menstruation recently or we are both going to be in trouble." She said cryptically.

Michonne's eyes widened in shock as Ariane stared back at her. It was then that she saw it. There was a steadiness there that Michonne had not seen the first time they met on the Mission steps. In the three months since she'd seen the girl last something had calcified and hardened in her. Whether or not DaDa had had his way with her as he had threatened, Ariane was no longer a girl but a woman. Michonne couldn't help the wave of both respect and pity that realization brought on. She could only imagine the horrors she'd endured in that time. Michonne yet again found herself near tears and about to say something. But again Ariane put her finger to her lips and hushed her.

Pulling herself off her knees, Ariane rose. A slight smile played at her lips entreating Michonne both to trust her and follow her lead. As she reached the door with her tray in hand, she turned back to Michonne and spoke gravely in French.

*DaDa would never allow anything to happen to your child. He loves all children.*

Michonne gasped finally understanding Ariane's plan and her words. Inadvertently, she clutched at her stomach stricken, just as the guard who was letting Ariane out looked in on her. It made for a fairly convincing tableau, whether or not she'd intended it to. Ariane had bought her some time, while at the same time, illuminating why she was there. She was there to die at DaDa's hand, a casualty of someone's attempt to tie up loose ends. But, with Ariane's quick thinking she'd just been granted a small stay.

...Still, if she was correct, and she could generally set a watch by her period, her reprieve amounted to little more than eight additional days. Short of a miracle, Michonne was unsure what could be achieved by then. But the world had supposedly been created in seven, she reminded herself, suddenly hoping for something only a little short of divine intervention.


	26. Chapter 26

*** Author's Note***

Wow! I continue to be so immensely grateful that you guys are digging this. Not at all for the first time, I feel so lucky to have happened upon this wonderful fandom and the amazing, talented, supportive people (mainly women I think, although any dudes out there, please feel free to get at me too!) that have made this such a continuously fun and fulfilling ride. So thank you all again for trusting me and keeping up with me and talking back to me. Thank you thank you thank you! Okay, now having said that, I want let you know that we're taking a little trip down the rabbit hole (an apropos reference, I think since our TWD princess Sonequa was just reciting Lewis Carroll in the third episode of ST:D - anyone who likes Sci-Fi please, I implore you, go support our girl in her new Space Adventures!) ...Ahem, but I digress, my point is we're maybe at the midway point and things might be, um, different, now. But before that, and episode 100 of our beloved show returning, here is my teeny-tiny, little homage to Season 1 episode 5...

7/27/15 09:02 CAT

Medical Station Omicron, Rwanda

 _That didn't make any sense._

As far as anyone knew, this pandemic began roughly 72 hours ago. Given that, there was absolutely no reason that a supposedly secure facility that houses the things Dr. Mamet claimed were here should be abandoned at any time, let alone a time like this. Rick rubbed his eyebrow with the knuckle of his thumb pensively. His jaw clenched as he mulled the meaning of that information.

"Look Rick," Peletier's voice lost the deferential tone it usually had as she moved in close and spoke to him. "Even though you were wrong, you were still right. This was the move. You had to at least try."

Rick was confused for a minute, understanding her words but not her meaning, until it occurred to him. She was trying to console him, he realized. What she didn't know, however, because she didn't know him was that he would break down the door and turn that facility inside out to find something, anything that could help Michonne and Sasha. _This was hardly over._ He looked at Carol and pat her on the shoulder.

"I know," He answered bluntly, already moving away from her and toward the rest of the group at the cargo bay door. "C'mon, let's get started."

Carol returned to the cockpit momentarily to control the doors from there.

Rosita assisted Sasha by the waist as Sasha leaned heavily on her with the bad arm slung over her shoulders. They both held guns in their free hands, although Sasha's trembled slightly. She looked better than she had in hours, not as pallid as she was before, but that still wasn't saying much. She, like Michonne, needed medical attention sooner rather than later.

Daryl agreed to push Michonne's stretcher while Jesus, Glenn and Carol formed a perimeter around the group, with Rick at its head. They wouldn't be leaving anyone behind on the plane this time. Rick had learned that lesson. But deciding that made the trip to the entrance of the facility that much more precarious, since they would have their wounded with them slowing them down. Luckily for them, the tarmac looked completely desolate.

Dr. Mamet stood alongside Michonne, within the protected circle the group had created. "Ms. Philippe, I promise you, this is going to work."

"Milton," Michonne pat his hand resting on her gurney. "Don't make promises you can't keep."

She had been speaking quietly to Milton alone, but Rick noted it. He watched as Mamet closed his mouth chastened. She must have been in a lot of pain, normally Michonne was the far more diplomatic one between the two of them. He walked to the front of the group mildly amused as the doors began their slow slide open.

Their time was, as was becoming usual, limited. Though the area surrounding the outpost was deserted, the low-flying plane would surely have attracted the attention of not only any infected from the village but anyone possibly living as well. Unlike previously, Rick knew, because of the fence that surrounded the facility, it was now the living that were the real concern, not the infected.

"Keep moving, everybody stay together. C'mon," He instructed as they stepped off the cargo bay ramp onto the tarmac.

Carol closed the bay doors and a moment later hopped out of the cockpit hatch, taking her position flanking Rosita. "All set. The car's parked and I've got the keys."

"Alright, let's keep it together," Rick said again urging everybody forward.

Maintaining a tight circle they crossed the runway easily and quickly. But soon the rank odor of decay hit them like a wall simultaneously. Glenn gagged and Daryl turned to spit repeatedly. Then Mamet gasped, bringing the first body lying in the high grass to their attention. Looking around, Rick realized there were over a dozen more hidden in the overgrowth. Bullets to the head, almost uniformly, told an ominous story.

"They're wearing scrubs. All of them," Michonne observed struggling to a more upright position.

"And there more over there," Jesus noted with uncharacteristic sobriety. He nodded off toward a field on their distant left as he took his eyes away from his scope. "Dressed the same."

"Oh my God, what now?" Sasha asked for the first time in hours, causing everyone to look her way briefly.

Rick looked around taking in what they were saying but still moving with intent toward the building 20 yards away.

"Don't stop." He kept walking as side conversations sprung up around him.

"What's the point, man?" Daryl asked.

"Rick, it's the medical staff. They're all dead!" Michonne spoke loudly, directly to him as others whispered the words between themselves.

He turned to look at her then, up on her elbows but trembling from the strain as Milton tried to gently hold her back. Rick fought the slight sense of betrayal he felt at her sudden dissent. Every and any one of the others could give up. He would find a way to deal with that. _But not Michonne._ She had nerves of steel and never wavered in her conviction, when she believed in you, she believed and that was it. And when she didn't, it was in quiet reproach. That's why Rick knew something was wrong. Even in their worst moments, on the Saviors' compound when their deaths seemed imminent, he knew she was with him. Just two days before when she'd done what no one, not even Lori, would have and leapt a fifty story drop into his arms, she'd trusted him implicitly. So it only took a moment before he recognized that it wasn't him she was betraying with those words.

 _It was herself._

The pain, which Rick realized in that moment must have been far worse than he had guessed, was starting to become too much for her. Maybe it was even beginning to cloud her judgement. Whatever the case, it was becoming clear Michonne didn't think she could go on much longer. Faced with this newest development, she was going to give up. He couldn't have that. _Just hang on a little longer_ , he wanted to plead with her, reason with her. Especially after getting this close, he couldn't fathom losing her instead. So, he didn't respond, just turning forward and again continuing toward the building as if he hadn't heard her words at all. The group realized quickly that they had no choice but to follow, arriving in front of the building silently.

The small, unmarked door suggested nothing as much as an oversized closet or a concrete storage space. From the outside it gave no clue to what might be within. A large mesh gate created a barrier between them and the door. A small console and keypad stood on a podium near the entrance. Rick looked up and saw camera in front of the door and two on either corner of the building mounted under small eaves. Beyond the mesh gate. Another camera with a call button was embedded on one side of the plain steel door entrance.

"Doctor, can you do anything with that?" Rick looked at him expectantly.

Mamet suddenly looked as if he'd been put on the spot as the entire group turned to look at him. Even Michonne watched him from her slightly reclined position on the stretcher.

"Well, there's no secret code if that's what you're asking," He looked around at everyone's faces. "...at least not one my brother told me about."

Nevertheless, all eyes stayed on him. As he walked to the console, Pvt. Rhee and Rick parted to let him pass. Mamet stood before it confounded. "I assumed there would be people here to let us in."

The group groaned collectively.

"Look, with a human interface there are 'Magic words' so to speak but if the whole thing is automated, I just don't know."

"Try," Rick growled, his accent becoming more pronounced in his irritation.

Milton touched the face of the console delicately and it came to life, requesting his hand print. He placed his palm down cautiously as if he worried something might happen to it.

The screen flashed briefly before a red line appeared denying him access.

It wouldn't have been that easy. He sighed looking somewhat relieved, which angered Rick inexplicably. "Try. Again."

"I don't think it's going to work, Captain."

"I said try again. And again after that, Doctor," Rick said before he strode to the mesh gate and touched it quickly. It wasn't electrified. He put both hands on the gate, digging his fingers through the mesh links. He looked futilely at the whole thing very carefully searching for a breach point. Unfortunately, it rolled up into concrete eaves above the door.

 _They had to get in._ He shook the whole thing violently in frustration. "HEY!"

"Captain, there's nobody here." Glenn stepped toward him stating the obvious.

Rick shot him a withering look. "If that's the case, then why are the shutters down? Who killed the staff?"

"Do we really want to know? I gotta say Captain, this looks like a dead end," Jesus added unhelpfully.

"Rick, we can't stay out here much longer. Someone must have heard the plane. People could be coming." Carol stepped toward him and said in a low tone.

"Rick, let's go," Michonne said weakly.

He turned at the sound of her voice alarmed at how much it had changed in under ten minutes. Milton stepped out of the way as he walked to the side of her gurney. Rick put a hand to her forehead. It was burning up.

"You okay?" He asked her softly.

"No," She admitted in a whisper.

Rick looked up into the morose visage of Rosita, who still held Sgt. Williams at her side. Sasha didn't look a whole lot better. At the same moment, Rick caught movement in the upper part of the building, above the gated entrance, out of the corner of his eye.

"The camera, it moved!" He said encouraged.

"I'm sure it moves when there's motion outside," Glenn said.

"I know you're in there! I know you can hear me. We're desperate. We have two injured people here. One gravely. Please help us! If you don't let us in, you're killing them." Rick moved back to the gate shouting while ignoring the dissent of the others.

"Rick, c'mon man," Daryl said coming up behind Rick and putting a hand on his shoulder that he promptly shrugged off.

"They're gonna die! You're killing them!" He shouted at the end of his tether. He slumped in frustration.

 _This could not be happening._

"Rick!" Rosita called. He turned to the group at once and saw Sasha standing on her own as Rosita hung over Michonne's stretcher. She rubbed Michonne in the shoulder with her knuckles roughly.

"Michonne, Michonne, honey. I know you're tired but you gotta stay awake for me," Rosita said continuing to rub the area below her clavicle bone until she roused again.

Rick couldn't remember the last time he'd made a call this bad.

 _...If he didn't include his entire friendship with Shane._

"Step back," He instructed Daryl and Glenn, the people standing between him and the gate, as he pulled his rifle up from where it hung at his side.

"Captain, I seriously doubt that's going to make a difference," Mamet cautioned as the Private and Corporal prudently cleared a path.

It was more anger than any other thought or feeling that drove him. Rick pulled the sight to his eye taking aim at the camera. His finger eased onto the trigger just as a voice spoke.

"Now is that necessary? Really?" A voice asked from the console. The gate slowly began to lift enticingly before stopping a few inches from the ground.

"Let us in! We have injured people here."

"How is that my problem?"

"Cut the shit and just let us in. You wouldn't even have said anything if you weren't plannin' to already," Daryl said coming up behind Rick at the gate to stand before the camera.

"Maybe I didn't want you shooting up my front door. Or maybe I just want a little something to break up the monotony of my days," The voice said. It was accented like a native of the region but the syntax was strangely American and his English was exceedingly good.

"This guy's a pig," Sasha spoke to Rosita shakily under her breath.

"Just when I was beginning to feel sympathetic. You need to watch your mouth, young lady."

Sasha had spoken in a strangled whisper, still clearly contending with the pain of her injury. That this Gatekeeper could hear her at that volume was a shock to everyone. They all exchanged glances as they realized just how sensitive the microphone on the console was. Rick was hit by a sudden wave of apprehension then. This guy was playing games and they had yet to learn the rules.

"Cap, look," Carol gestured with her chin toward the western fence line on the other side of the runway. At that distance Rick could see a single infected standing there pawing at the fence. That was in the direction of Karengera, which meant where there was one, there would shortly be more he realized grimly.

"Oooh, looks like I'm gonna have some real excitement soon," The Gatekeeper said joyously.

Rick looked at Jesus, who understood instantly what was required of him. With a nod, he brought his large rifle level with his eyes and dispatched the thing quickly, barely changing his stance.

"Okay, I'm impressed. You bunch have intrigued me. Answer a simple question and I'll consider letting you in."

"We don't have time for this," Carol whispered to Rick.

"You think I don't _know_ that?" Rick said under his breath.

"I really don't care what you have time for. You want in or not?" The voice said harshly.

Carol's face darkened with embarrassment. Rick turned away from the camera toward the group and shook his head putting a finger to his lips. Carol nodded, chagrined. The rest followed suit.

"Yes," Rick answered simply.

He looked up at the camera expectantly. There was no way he could afford to antagonize this guy. Even if this lunatic had managed to kill off the entire medical staff, there were still painkillers, supplies, antibiotics, things Rick didn't even understand, inside that building that they needed access to.

"Okay, tell me, which creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?"

"Wha-, what?" Rick stumbled over his words unclear on what was happening.

"Ehhh!" The voice said loudly imitating a buzzer. "Wrong answer! You get one more chance. Make it good."

"Is this guy joking with this shit?" Rosita asked incredulously, breaking open a packet of smelling salts under Michonne's nose. The woman's eyes startled open and she pushed Rosita's hand away weakly. "Doesn't he understand she's dying?

"Yes, I do. And if none of you can manage to answer a simple question, then maybe it's for the best that your family lines end with you." The Gatekeeper chuckled as Rick fixed Rosita with a hard glare.

"Quiet," Rick barked at her. To which she promptly turned back to Michonne who reached up shakily and put a comforting hand on hers. Though weakened Michonne still managed to give Rick a warning glare.

"Does anyone know _what the hell_ he's talking about?" Rick turned to the rest of the group suddenly.

"It's a riddle. The most famous riddle in the world, actually," Milton offered quickly. Looking for the light of recognition in any of them. "What walks on four legs, then two legs, and then three legs?"

"We heard 'im. You know the answer or not, Doc?" Daryl asked impatiently.

Rick felt the same way but remained silent not wanting to provide their monitor with any more information about their group dynamics than they already had. He put a hand on his hip and waited. Michonne said something low and indecipherable to Rosita and Milton who stood closest to her. Rick came closer to hear.

"It's _The_ _Riddle of the Sphinx_." She repeated huskily.

Milton smiled down at her, his face annoyingly filled with pity. "Yes, exactly."

"The answer?" Rick asked testily.

"Rick, relax." Michonne said to him, her voice clear enough to indicate her displeasure with the way he was behaving.

"A man," Dr. Mamet answered promptly. "Us. Humans."

"Very good, Doctor." The voice said immediately. "Even if everyone else dies, don't worry, we'll keep you."

Milton looked around, his eyes wide like platters. Whether or not it was genuinely meant as reassurance or a compliment, it sounded more like a threat from the ominous voice.

"Okay gang, only two people knew the answer? I know you can do better than that. Try again. 'What is greater than God, more evil than the devil, the poor have it, the rich need it, and if you eat it, you'll die?'"

"I thought it was _one_ question?" Sasha said shakily. Glenn came up beside her and offered her his arm, which she leaned on heavily.

"It's as many questions as I fuckin' feel like, Sassy," The Gatekeeper replied sharply losing the jovial tone he had a moment before. "And Ringleader, I'd think carefully before I let either her or Spitfire over there speak again. Now, everyone...put your thinking caps on."

Rick looked at the faces of his companions seeking an answer. Carol's indicated that she was deep in thought pondering this newest riddle. Glenn held Sasha up as they conferred with Daryl in a huddled whisper. Jesus held his arm draped over his gun, wearing a frown, mulling it himself. If Jesus failed to find some humor in this, Rick knew they were all in trouble.

"Any one?" He whispered.

Heads shook as they puzzled over it, stumped. Rick put the question out there hoping someone else was thinking clearly. For himself, Rick burned with anger. He seethed, far too incensed to think straight, to be "clever". He just knew if the guy behind the camera was really as smart as he thought he was, he would not let them in. Rick was pretty sure he was going to kill him as soon as the gates opened. But for now, Michonne had asked him to remain calm and he resolved to.

"Come now, at least one of you must be an asset to the gene pool?"

 _What's greater than God?_ Rick asked himself wondering if he knew the answer, if he even believed there was an answer anymore.

He and Lori had made a point of going to church occasionally but that had been mainly for Carl's benefit. Neither of them were particularly devout people. Now, in light of everything that had just happened, Rick honestly wasn't sure if he'd lost faith or gained it. He'd definitely found himself calling on God more in the last twenty-four hours than he had in decades, but that did not make him a believer necessarily.

"What's greater than God?" He said aloud mulling it further.

"What do the poor have that rich people need?" Jesus repeated.

"You gotta do more than rephrase the question, Champ. This isn't _Jeopardy_ ," The voice admonished them.

Carol perked up, turning to them suddenly, "Nothing."

She smiled triumphantly, "What's greater than God and more evil than the devil. Something poor people have that rich people need. If you eat it, you'll die? _Nothing_."

Rick recognized instantly that she was right. "Nothing!" he reiterated loudly before the camera.

"Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner! Ding, Ding, Ding! A point for the Silver Fox!" As the voice said that the automated whine of the gate began, indicating movement with a sound not unlike a garage door opener. The gate retracted smoothly into the recesses of the concrete eaves overhead.

The group, led by Rick, rushed toward the door. But it was still locked when he reached for the handle.

"Oh, one last question and this might be _the_ most important one..."

Rick joined the group in a chorus of exasperated sighs. He looked at Michonne and Sasha. They both looked to be on their last legs. Help couldn't come fast enough. He shook the door in frustration.

"Yeah, what?" Rick finally answered in a guttural drawl.

"That lovely lady on the litter, she wouldn't happen to be Michonne _Philippe,_ by any chance, would she?"


	27. Chapter 27

May 6th, 2011

Kisangani DRC

"It is an odd film, I admit, but it looks interesting. Every time the main character dances, in her mind she is fighting a battle, with guns," Makemba said standing at his side looking up at him, waiting for a response. "Captain Grimes, are you listening?"

"Sure, Kem," Rick looked at her as if he'd been caught. "And she's dressed up like a baby doll."

Makemba laughed. "No, Captain, that's her _name_."

"Her name is Babydoll?" Rick said looking away from the front door of the mission where his eyes continually strayed, down on Makemba incredulously.

"See, you weren't listening." The young nurse confirmed, giving him a playful frown.

"I'm sorry, Kem. I am a little distracted," He admitted as the coffee in his hand grew colder and colder in its cup.

"Michonne is quite late today," Kem commiserated, nodding.

"What?" He said revealing once again that his attention was elsewhere. "I'm sorry, Kem, really. What did you say?"

The young woman smiled wanly, placing a hand on the arm that held Michonne's tepid cup of coffee. "I said, I noticed Miss Philippe is really late today."

Rick looked at his watch, nodding in agreement. "Yeah, she is. You haven't heard from her?"

"Me?" Kem said surprised. "Oh no, but I can ask Dr. Clara when I get into the clinic, though."

"That would be great," Rick said trying his utmost to focus on Makemba's words instead of allowing his eyes to stray to the door every time someone entered. "Are you headed there now?"

There was a pause as Rick looked back down at his watch then the door for the fifth time in the last five minutes.

"I can," Makemba offered reluctantly.

"Thanks," Rick said absently. "I'll probably be in Maggie's office so you can just call me up there."

"Oh. Okay." She replied softly as he moved away from her. "What about the movie toni-"

Rick turned, tossing the old coffee in the lobby trash, as he headed for the staircase. He took them two by two, breaking into a jog down the hall at the landing.

With two hard warning raps of his knuckles on the frosted glass of her office door, Rick opened it and peered inside. "Maggie?"

Rick opened the door further when he saw Shane standing inside, at his fiancée's desk running a finger over her papers. "Hey!"

Shane looked up at him startled as if caught with his pants down.

"Everything alright?" Rick asked briefly intrigued by Shane's behavior. He slipped in the door, closing it behind him. "Maggie not here?"

Shane shook his head, glumly.

"She out in the field?" Rick knew Maggie made house calls, as did Michonne, particularly for people too infirm to travel to the Mission.

Generally, those trips were to be run through his office with a member of his team assigned to accompany them. But Maggie and Michonne were two of the most obstinate women he knew. Particularly if the visit was within 20 miles of Kisangani, he was hard-pressed to get either of them to agree to a security detail. Back when it was him and Shane, Michonne had little choice. But now that he was forced to frequently delegate that responsibility, he found her much more wily about getting out of it. And she'd infected Maggie with her ways.

"I can't find Michonne," Rick announced as Shane looked at him.

Shane reached up to scratch the side of his face blankly as if stumped by Rick's words.

"You think they might be together?" Rick asked, seeking a greater level of concern than his best friend was currently giving him.

Shane looked at him askance for a second before answering with a shrug.

He was being odd but Rick only gave it a moment of thought before moving on. "Normally, she'd let me know if she was going to be off-campus."

"Yeah, well she didn't the last time," Shane offered obliquely.

"They _both_ didn't," Rick countered, feeling strangely defensive all of a sudden.

He and Shane had never explicitly discussed it– Maggie and Shane's part in what had happened. Even as Michonne shouldered the burden of blame within the office for what transpired, it was as if Maggie had not been involved. For some reason, because Kevin and Maggie were injured and Michonne was not, the staff had chosen to absolve them entirely while Michonne's social circle had shrunken down to all of four people. Shane's farewell party had helped to ameliorate that somewhat but she was still on the outside looking in. Still, until this moment, Rick had never felt protective of her over it, but he could feel his hackles slowly rising with Shane then.

"I didn't mean nothin'. Just that she's been known to go places without sayin' anything."

"I know what you were saying and _I'm_ saying no, not really. Not without telling me." Rick wondered where the sudden undercurrent of hostility he felt between them was coming from. "That was a special circumstance."

Shane chuckled as he always did in response to any irritation on Rick's part. "I can see why you've got a real following with the ladies. Kem, Michonne, Felice at the coffee shop. Always their knight in shining armor, aren't you?"

" _Excuse me_?" Rick put his hands on his hips and looked hard at Shane. Rick was sure he must be joking as he usually did, but for some reason it was getting under his skin.

Shane threw his palms up defensively, continuing to smile that smug way that stuck in Rick's craw.

"I mean, look Man, you got Lori waitin' patiently at home for you. But you're still here concerning yourself with every little move this girl makes. You ever think that's why Lori doesn't like it when we're all stationed together? You don't see it. And honestly, I don't think it's deliberate, but Buddy trust me, it's embarrassingly obvious to everyone else. You gotta stop being up under her. She is makin' a fool outta you."

Shane leaned over his fiancée's desk with a hand on the surface as if he were a manager chastising an employee. Rick was livid but he tried to breath through his sudden irritation.

 _Shane's words were just motivated by growing pains._ Intellectually, Rick knew this. Never before had Shane's departure felt so final –which made sense, since in a way it was. But enough was enough. Shane was clearly lashing out as opposed to dealing with his separation anxiety. Rick recognized it easily because Carl did the same thing every time he redeployed. Still, the fact that he was comparing his thirty-eight year old best friend to a nine year old was a problem.

"So you all set to go?" Rick asked with a sigh, taking a beat and deliberately moving in a different direction to avoid the argument that was coming.

Though the men were almost always stationed together by design, over the years their terms of deployment frequently differed. Usually, Rick stayed at any given Mission for months after Shane, sometimes because Shane arrived first but most often because Rick chose to extend whereas Shane seldom did. This posting had been different, with Shane staying almost as long as Rick, having had only a brief two month leave to break up the time. Maybe they were growing sick of one another? Perhaps that was another reason why this all felt so different and unusual even though they'd done it for years.

"More than ready." Shane answered quickly clearly amused with his friend for diverting the conversation. "By this time next week, I plan to be belly up at Floyd's with a cold bottle of suds."

"Don't you have a date with Hershel in New York first?" Rick frowned.

"Oh shit, yeah. Plus I gotta get Maggie's ring. She's been makin' due with that little trinket I got her in Brazzaville but I got somethin' _real_ nice lined up."

"Diamond district?" Rick asked.

"Better. I'm goin' straight to the horse's mouth. I'm stopping briefly in Geneva to go to headquarters and I'm gonna get it there."

"Fancy," Rick said trying not to speculate on how much money Shane was planning to blow on another ring.

He knew Maggie. She was the kind of girl that was perfectly content with the old fashioned gold ring Shane had presented her with originally. So Rick recognized, this was more about Shane's ego than anything else.

 _Speak of the devil_. Rick thought as he felt the door push open behind him and hit him in the back. He turned to find Maggie making her way inside.

"What the—" She looked up, surprised to see the men standing in her office. Still, she smiled pleasantly at Rick as he stepped out of her way and let her enter the room fully.

"Hey Maggie." It was only then that it occurred to him how strange it might seem to find them there waiting for her. "Sorry for the intrusion."

She eased past him in the narrow alcove at the mouth of her office with a perplexed smile.

"Hey there," She replied pleasantly as she walked across the room to her fiance. "Everything okay?"

She looked between them both, their silence deepening her frown lines.

Rick nodded, trying to hold his growing apprehension in check.

"Hey baby." Shane said adoringly at Maggie before she kissed him lightly.

He drew his hand intimately down the plane of her face as if trying to memorize it by touch alone. Shane closed his eyes briefly and reveled in her feel. She whispered something to him beyond Rick's hearing, pushing his hand away.

Shane mumbled his reply as Rick remained in his position by the door holding on to the handle. Rick struggled to wait patiently while whatever new drama was brewing passed between them. It seemed like every other day they were either deeply in love or at loggerheads. And whereas normally he might have felt embarrassed to be intruding, right now he had more pressing concerns.

Still, as he watched them he couldn't help but reflect on the fact that even in the early years of their relationship, he and Lori had never been like that. It wasn't that they loved each other any less or lacked the passion of Maggie and Shane, they had just always been more...constant. But in moments like this, he sometimes found himself wondering what was missing between him and his wife. He watched the young couple wistfully for a brief second before his mind rushed back to Michonne.

"Maggie, have you seen Michonne today?" He finally cut in when he couldn't wait on their PDA, or whatever it was, any longer.

Maggie turned and looked at him, puzzled. "No."

Shane's jaw tightened but he turned away to look out the window.

 _Good_ , Rick thought noting Shane's movement.

It was just as well for both of them that Shane shut up if he couldn't add constructively to their conversation. Rick knew that he had far less tolerance for Shane's running commentary now that they knew Michonne and Maggie were definitely not together.

"She's not with Francine or Aaron either?"

Maggie shook her head, "We just had a staff meeting. I thought it was a little weird that she wasn't there for it but I figured she was in the field."

"That's what I said," Shane interjected and Rick scowled.

"When was the last time you saw her?" He asked.

"Last night, she came over and we hung out. Why?"

"'Cuz she hasn't been in today." Rick walked toward her desk placing a hand on the back of her visitor's chair. He kneaded it with his fingers anxiously.

"She didn't? Well, she didn't mention taking a day off to me."

"She doesn't need to, she's a grown woman," Shane added snarkily. Maggie and Rick both looked at him but with his back to them he missed their puzzled expressions.

"She doesn't need to but she should, I'm the Director of Security," Rick reminded his friend in case he'd forgotten, with his other hand on his hip. He knew that was a slight bone of contention between them so he tried not to do that often but Shane was getting on his nerves. "I'm accountable for every soul in this building."

"No one's saying she's not an adult, babe, but that isn't like her," Maggie added diplomatically to Shane, trying to bridge the sudden obvious divide.

"Maybe she's getting some R&R, that girl's certainly entitled," Shane offered yet again.

"Have you tried her at home?" Maggie said to Rick, ignoring Shane's comment.

Rick felt silly. He hadn't. He shook his head indicating as much while Maggie and Shane looked at him. Maggie smiled and picked up her office phone to dial.

"We did drink a lot. Maybe she's hungover."

That didn't sound like Michonne either, but Rick would take that explanation over an unknown alternative.

"Did she call you when she got home?"

Maggie's face moved slowly from a smile to a frown as he waited watching her with the phone to her ear. "No, the night ended less...ideally."

"Michonne, honey, it's Maggie. Give me a call when you get this. I know it's silly but we're a little worried we haven't heard from you this morning." She left the message before pressing down the receiver and dialing again.

"So you don't know if she got home safely last night?" Rick confirmed.

Maggie shrugged guiltily, "I'm trying her cell."

"I tried the cell." Rick offered recalling the two calls and five texts to her as he stood in the lobby with Makemba talking his ear off.

Maggie left a voice message there as well, while Rick and Shane stood watching, arms crossed. They were both annoyed, although Rick suspected, for two very different reasons. Shane seemed exasperated while Rick simply needed something to do with his hands as he felt his level of anxiety rising.

"I just thought she didn't call 'cuz she was a little pissed when she left. I was too, honestly," Maggie confessed.

 _This just didn't feel right._ The feeling in Rick's gut grew.

"Okay, I have a copy of her house keys. I'm going over there," Maggie announced.

Rick saw Shane's face twitch with annoyance but he remained silent. Which Rick knew at that moment was a good course of action for him.

"I'll take you," Rick agreed.

"You coming babe?" Maggie looked back at her fiance, who still leaned against her window sill with his arms tight to his chest.

"No, I'll stay here...in case she calls."

"Good, that's it right there," Rick said decisively satisfied that he wouldn't have to deal with Shane's irritating nonchalance for the rest of the morning. "That's the deal. You call us if you hear anything. We'll call with any developments."

"I still think y'all are worried over nothin'," Shane said as they all exited the room, walking down the hall in opposite directions.

"Well, better that than somethin'," Maggie said following Rick down the hall as Shane moved farther away from them.


	28. Chapter 28

7/27/15 09:28 CAT

Medical Station Omicron, Rwanda

For Michonne, as the pain medication had worn off, the sensation in her abdomen began to block out all other things. The discomfort of the binder, the itch on her ankle, the bumpy ride on the narrow stretcher, the muggy heat radiating off the concrete, even the sounds of the conversations happening around her, faded in and out of her consciousness. Still, she had managed to hear the questions the man on the intercom was asking Rick. She'd been trying valiantly to follow the progression of the effort to gain access to the facility, but as her pain worsened, it had grown harder to do so.

The questions panicked and angered Rick, she was lucid enough to see that. And when he was in that frame of mind he was more apt to act rashly. Michonne needed him to stay calm for her but more importantly for the group who were all, like him, at their wit's end. When he came close enough to touch her, Michonne grabbed his hand and squeezed. She attempted to stay in the conversation for the same reason –to keep the group from worrying– but it seemed like that wasn't so effective. More than once, Michonne had opened her eyes to see Sgt. Espinosa hovering over her with her own somewhat panicked expression. Still, she had managed to stay awake and alert enough to hear that last question. And if it hadn't felt like the pain in her side was going to rip her in half any minute now, she'd have been quite concerned herself.

Michonne moaned as she watched Rosita insert a needle into the IV line running into her arm. A wave of warmth ran up her arm and washed over her. She felt as the pain eased slightly and the world grew softer in focus. This was more of the good stuff Rosita had told her she was doling out sparingly since Michonne and Sasha were basically sharing a single person's normal allotment.

 _God Bless, Sgt. Espinosa._ Michonne thought with a heavy sigh as the incessant ache in her abdomen eased slightly. Rosita smiled down sweetly at her.

She looked over Rosita's shoulder and saw Rick and Shane— _no, that was L. Cpl. Dixon_ — exchange a look. She knew what it meant on Rick's end, but had no idea what Dixon's face was saying. He was a little like a Sphinx himself. Clearly without meaning to be at all, he was a bit inscrutable. Michonne giggled to herself imagining Daryl's face on the ancient Egyptian monument.

Rick gave Rosita, who was hovering again, a look.

"I had to give her a little more morphine in her drip. Can't have her passing out from the pain. Unfortunately, that means she's gonna be a little bit loopy."

Rick nodded.

"Michonne does that voice sound familiar to you?" He leaned into her and asked slowly with a hand resting on her forearm.

"I'm sedated not stupid, Richard. _All_ your voices sound familiar."

Rick rubbed his eyebrow. "'Chonne, focus. The voice coming from _inside_ the building. Did it sound familiar?"

He leaned over the gurney, crowding her like Rosita had. She very nearly pushed him away. Michonne was exasperated with all the people in her face. She was hot and tired and every time she tried to just close her eyes for even a second that damn Rosita was there to bother her some more.

"I'm not _inside_ the building, am I? How should I know?" She replied shortly.

"Ooh, she's still spunky." The voice on the intercom piped up after long minutes of apparent silence. "I missed that."

"Shut up," Rick barked.

He looked at Rosita and sighed. "Is she going to sober up any time soon?"

"Doubtful. I only gave her the shot fifteen minutes ago." She replied.

 _Fifteen? It felt like she'd gotten that shot two seconds ago._ Michonne thought, before reconsidering. Time was a bit of a jumble for her currently, she realized.

" _She_ is the cat's mother, Captain. I'm right here," Michonne announced indignantly.

Rick smiled down on her. "Our, I mean, _Shane's_ grandmother, Jean used to say that."

"Well, she was right. Sounds like a wise woman. Although, she did manage to raise a sociopath, so... Anyway, you listen to me, you do _not_ talk about me like I'm not here."

"You're absolutely right. I'm sorry," He said quickly with a smirk.

"And stop smiling, it's distracting," Michonne instructed sternly.

 _He was so cute when he was contrite. That was merely one reason why she loved him._ Even operating on only a couple hours sleep, haggard and sweating like a pig in a sauna, she found him sexy as hell. It had been a problem for her since that first day standing in the terminal in Port au Prince. She met him and she'd known almost instantly that she was in trouble. That day those pool blue eyes had drawn her in like a tractor beam and dammit if she'd had a single moment of peace since.

Silence resounded amongst the group as the voice of the intercom cackled. Carol looked over at Daryl, while Jesus and Milton cleared their throats conspicuously.

Glenn shifted and Sasha, who leaned heavily on him, whimpered softly.

"Rick, we have to decide now," Rosita insisted.

Rick sighed before answering the voice. "Yes, it is."

Michonne was having increased difficulty following the conversation. She squinted to listen as if that would somehow make her hearing better but nothing made much sense anymore. She closed her eyes briefly to rest them. Her eyelids felt so heavy. When she opened them again the group was resting their weapons against the building by the door. Rick stood to one side watching as one-by-one, people took the guns off their shoulders and their side arms from their holsters to add to the growing pile...

"Michonne!" Rosita said roughly jarring her awake.

"What? What's going on?" She asked startled, her eyes popping open.

"Stay. Awake. They won't let us in armed," Rosita answered quietly. "Once we ditch our weapons, he's promised to finally open the door."

Michonne understood what a great sacrifice everyone was making for her. Tears welled in her eyes, slipping down the corners and back into her ears and hair.

Sasha came and leaned on the railing of the stretcher while Glenn dropped off his guns and emptied his backpack of other items by the door. She gripped the side rail with her hand. Michonne knew she felt like crap but Sasha looked like she was barely on her feet. In a minute they were going to need a second gurney.

"You okay?" Michonne asked putting a hand over hers as the woman hung limply over her.

"Hopefully, I will be soon," She whispered with her eyes fixed on everyone slowly unloading their weaponry. It was Carol's turn as they both watched. "Thank you."

Michonne looked at her unsure she heard her properly. "What're you thanking me for?"

"I'm thanking you because there's no way he'd have done this if you weren't injured too," Sasha answered cynically.

Everything felt vaguely soft around the edges but she didn't misunderstand that. Michonne let her hand slip off Sasha's as she fixed her with the hardest gaze she could muster.

"Sergeant, you just met us, you couldn't know shit about the type of person Rick is. If he can find a way to help you, he _always_ will. His first concern is always other people, _His people_. Their safety, their security. And like it or not, you're one of his people now," Michonne replied testily.

 _That's what she'd always loved about him._

"See, that's nice and everything. You say all that but at the end of the day we all know why he even agreed to this detour," Sasha said resentfully "And it wasn't for me and my stump."

She lifted up the sling and showed the bruised arm and soiled bandages where her hand used to be.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Michonne asked irritably looking at the woman who was growing paler and clammier by the minute.

"What are you _doing_?" Rosita whispered harshly grabbing Sasha by the shoulders and pulling her a step back and away. "Are you really trying to do this right now? You are looking a gift horse directly in the mouth, do you realize that? Who cares why we're here? The point is, we are."

"We wouldn't be here if it weren't for them!" Sasha said in a sharp whisper.

"Yeah, we'd be _dead_. In a day or two, we'd have just been three more Zeke wandering around the base. If you thought there was any other conclusion to our situation than that, you're kidding yourself," Rosita said already pulling out a needle and a vial from her satchel.

"Rhee, c'mon," Rosita said summoning him as she put the needle into Sgt. Williams' shoulder.

Glenn scooped Sasha up into his arms as the medication began to take effect and her knees buckled beneath her.

"That's all I have left," Rosita admitted to Michonne. "We have to get inside for more. I need you to just try and stay awake for me until then, okay?"

Michonne nodded even as she continued to fight bone-crushing fatigue. The blinding sunlight and people hovering around were growing less and less effective as deterrents to sleep.

"Mi casa es su casa," The voice said again just as Michonne's eyes began to droop again.

Suddenly, there was a sound like a pneumatic seal opening, causing her to jump. A whoosh of air escaping accompanied the sound of the door unlocking.

"Provided you all can be good and obedient little piggies, we're gonna get along swell. Captain, you grab Ms. Philippe and lead the way. Leave the litter outside. Your Asian friend there can bring in the other knockout. I gotta wonder what you guys are doing to these gorgeous women?" The voice laughed as the doors opened and a tall, handsome cocoa-brown man in blue scrubs emerged to hold it open for them.

"He's cute for a psycho," Michonne whispered to no one in particular.

"Shhh." Came the immediate response.

"Anyway, that's how we're gonna do it. Two by two, just like boarding the Ark." The voice explained.

"Hi," the guy said nervously to the group. "I'm Scott."

At the same time he spoke, Rick came up to the gurney as Rosita lowered it a little. "I'm gonna try and be as gentle as possible, okay?"

Michonne nodded. Rick placed an arm under her knees and the other across the span of her back as she carefully wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Every movement was a symphony of pain. She tried to stifle herself but from the way he tensed right before he picked her up she realized she wasn't doing a good job.

"It's okay," She reassured him breathlessly. "Just do it."

"We don't have all day, Captain, chop, chop. I know you seem to think the fence is sealed but it's not." The voice chided, indicating the same sentiment. "I see visitors already breaching the southeast corner."

Michonne saw how Scott flinched as the voice spoke. They weren't together. He wasn't a henchman. He was a prisoner. There were two groups within the facility.

"The voice on the intercom…" Michonne started under her breath near Rick's ear. "Oh God!"

He hoisted her up at that precise moment and she moaned uncontrollably. The pain blocked out any other thoughts for a minute, then sharpened them all to one excruciating point.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I know." He openly begged her forgiveness as he lifted her higher in his arms, "Just a little longer."

"He's holding some of the facility staff hostage, I know." Rick whispered back in answer to her unfinished statement. "I can't worry about that right now. Let's get you and Sasha some medical attention and then we can work on that."

"Rick," Michonne panted when she could actually speak again. "What if he tries to hurt us, what if he doesn't let us go, what if—"

"'Chonne, you focus on getting better, right now. I'll worry about that, okay?" His mouth spoke the words into her temple as her head rested against his chin.

Michonne closed her eyes briefly, as he and Glenn walked toward the doors both cradling women in their arms.

"Do you still have doctors?" She heard Rick ask the man, Scott, as he crossed the threshold.

"Three," She heard him whisper back. "They killed the others to keep us in line."

"How many of you are left?" That was Glenn's voice doing the asking.

"Fifteen." Was the last answer she heard before she slipped away.

* * *

17:48 CAT

There was an oxygen mask over Michonne's face when she woke up but it was the beeping that actually roused her. Incessant and annoying, a machine beeped at regular intervals, accompanied by the droning of the air coming through the mask. She had never realized before that hospital rooms could be so noisy and disorienting. To her surprise though, Michonne had her bearings before she even opened her eyes. As she did and looked around, she was assaulted by the blinding white of the room. Every surface was completely colorless while all the furnishings were sleek, modular and sparse. The only spot of color was Lt. Peletier herself, sleeping curled up in a chair in the corner.

Michonne pulled the mask off clumsily. "Carol. Carol?"

Her voice was raspy and her throat raw as she spoke. The woman's eyes popped open almost immediately and she sat up as if called to attention by a superior. She jumped to her feet and walked to the door summoning someone.

"You're up." Carol came back smiling down at her. She grabbed her chair and pulled it closer before sitting again.

"How long have I been asleep?" Michonne croaked gesturing for the pitcher she saw on a table at the foot of her bed.

"Well, the surgery was fast." Carol answered pouring some water from the pitcher into a cup. She pressed a button on the side of the bed that brought Michonne upright. "You were in and out of there in about three hours and you've been asleep for about five hours since."

 _Eight hours._ Michonne wondered what manner of things might have occurred while she was out of it. Carol handed her the cup which she took quickly, drinking the contents greedily as Carol watched.

"And the sergeant, Sasha?" Michonne said once she came up for air.

The door opened a crack after a hard rap that interrupted them. A young woman with dirty blonde hair and large glasses that covered a third of her full, round face, peeked her head in.

"Michonne?" She said walking in further with a brief nod to Carol, who pushed her chair back a bit to let her pass. "I'm Dr. Cloyd, or Denise, feel free to use either one. So how are you feeling?"

"Okay, I guess." Michonne answered at a loss for what else she could say. It was a stupid question, although looking at the doctor's soft, open face, she knew she'd never say that out loud. The woman seemed so young, even her scrubs were too big for her.

Dr. Cloyd seemed to notice where Michonne's eyes strayed.

"Yeah," She plucked at her top. "I know, but I didn't have any of my own surgical scrubs, so I had to borrow a colleague's...I mean a former colleague's."

The doctor tripped over her words, glancing at Carol as her voice broke. She struggled to clear her throat.

"She's the one that patched you and Sasha up though she says she's not a surgeon. Did a fine job anyway, Doc," Carol added encouragingly.

"Thanks," Dr. Cloyd said regaining her composure. "You mind if I take a brief look at you?"

Michonne shook her head. "You helped Sasha too? How is she?"

"Very good." The doctor brightened significantly. "Taking some tests. Luckily for you both, despite appearances and besides the blood loss, neither of you were injured beyond the point that a first year resident couldn't have helped you. I just happened to be the one here. I must say I was impressed that you managed to save Sgt. Williams after she'd been bitten just by simply amputating the hand."

"She's an epidemiologist by trade," Carol explained as the doctor continued to talk despite Michonne's confused expression.

"...You all saved her, I just did the clean-up. That was some incredibly quick thinking."

"That was Rick," Carol answered. "Michonne wasn't there for that."

Michonne had wondered what happened but so much had occurred in the interim that she never had the opportunity to ask.

"Where is he and the others?" Michonne would never admit it aloud but she was surprised that he wasn't the one waiting here for her to wake up. It was a selfish thought but she couldn't help it.

"They're setting terms with this guy," Carol said grimly.

"Terms? Terms for what?" Michonne looked from one woman to the other.

"You know him," Dr. Cloyd attempted to say casually as she checked Michonne's vital signs. But Michonne could see the fear in the eyes. The concern that Michonne's group could somehow be in league with him was written plainly on her face. "Everything is a negotiation."

"I don't know him," Michonne answered easily, unclear on why the doctor would think that.

Carol looked at her curiously then. "Well, he certainly claims to know you."

Michonne was shocked that Carol was chiming in on this nonsense.

"What?" Michonne asked urgently. "Carol, what are you talking about?"

"It's not important right now. Rick asked me to just make sure you were resting."

"Lieutenant Peletier, I distinctly remember that you were told Captain Grimes wasn't the only person you took your orders from."

Her clipped tone brought Carol up short, although the effect was slightly undermined when Dr. Cloyd used that moment to stick an electronic thermometer in Michonne's mouth.

"Fine." Carol shrugged. "Do you remember anything from when we were trying to get in?"

Michonne shook her head, keeping her mouth shut to hold the doctor's thermometer in it securely. Denise tried unsuccessfully to pretend she wasn't a part of their conversation as she pulled the blood pressure cuff off Michonne's arm but she exchanged a quick look with Carol.

"Well, Michonne, you're the only reason he let us in at all."

Denise looked back and forth between them with concern even as she tried to complete her exam.

"What?" Michonne insisted once the thermometer was gone, her anxiety getting the better of her.

"Apparently, he knows you...and Rick," Carol answered ominously. "Michonne, he knew both your names."

"All done," Dr. Cloyd interrupted, stuffing her hands in her pockets and sighing deeply as she stepped back.

"I don't know how that's possible, I haven't even lived on this continent in over four years and I never ever lived in this country."

"But you know him, we all knew _of_ him, even before he showed up on our doorstep and forced his way inside," Denise said sadly. "Everyone in the region knows him."

Dread filled Michonne as the women spoke. A horrible dread like the kind caused by a nightmare that started right back up where it left off every time you closed your eyes. She had somehow managed to wake back up in a nightmare she thought she'd left behind four years prior.

"Doctor, what the hell are you talking about? Who is this man?" Michonne spoke forcefully before clutching her side in pain. She wanted it to not be true.

"Don't reopen your staples. Stay calm Michonne, please," Dr. Cloyd beseeching her. "We can't continue if you upset yourself."

"Michonne, the Captain will kill me if you don't settle down."

"And I will, if one of you don't please tell me what the fuck is going on?"

Denise looked at Carol, who shrugged again, relenting.

"Negan," Carol admitted finally. "Rick told us not to say anything to you. But his name is Negan...and he says you and he are old friends."


	29. Chapter 29

May 7th 2011

Location Unknown, DRC

The air was different this morning. Michonne could feel it.

From her cell, she heard the frenzied talking, the men were abuzz. _DaDa was coming._ It had taken a while for her to establish the ins and outs of the place where she was being held captive. No one but Ariane and Mama Oné, the medicine woman and apparently Ngangabouka's first wife, had been allowed entry. On her second full day there, she'd come to realize that they were not in the main Savior compound. And she'd learned that from Mama Onè.

Ngangabouka, apparently, was smart enough to create numerous different outposts. Lesser regional compounds where he generally kept a small complement of soldiers and a smaller harem of women prepared for his visits. She was surprised to learn the location of his main base of operations remained a complete mystery even to some of his own men.

*Because he doesn't trust anyone.* Mama Oné had explained in French when she asked. *And with good reason.*

Michonne gave the woman a tepid smile in response. She wasn't at all what Michonne had expected when she arrived in her cell the evening before. Statuesque, slim and beautiful, she was hardly the big bosomed, grandmotherly figure her name implied. With her head wrapped in a colorful scarf and adorned in bright fabric, she looked like one of the smartly dressed business women who owned the stores Michonne frequented in Kisangani, not the "wife" of a warlord.

When she came into her cell that night, Oné's face had been a cold mask that went with her icy beauty. She stared around the room briefly before her eyes settled on Michonne. Walking up to her, she gently cupped Michonne's face in her palms, turning her head left and right to inspect the damage her husband's minions had done. The stony veneer of her face cracked giving way to a warmer look of concern. Oné tsked with irritation as she inspected her. Until that moment, Michonne had not given a thought to how she must have appeared but the other woman's face did not indicate good things.

*Little Bird asked me to help you but I wasn't sure I would...until now.* Oné's voice was husky, in a smokily seductive way that matched her appearance.

*Why?* Michonne asked despite knowing she shouldn't be looking a gift horse in the mouth.

Oné smiled unexpectedly. It was quite pleasant, Michonne found. But there were teeth missing on the sides of her mouth that you wouldn't notice if she kept a straight face. Somehow without asking, Michonne knew that was Ngangabouka's doing. An inventive punishment for some perceived crime.

*Because I choose to.* She answered simply. The smile slipping off her face as quickly as it had appeared.

Michonne remained silent knowing that nothing would come of antagonizing the one ally it seemed she and Ariane had.

*Get to the corner bucket and pee on this.* Mama Oné said roughly and loudly, clearly for the benefit of the sentry outside.

She tossed what looked like a tampon in its wrapper to Michonne, who caught it awkwardly.

Michonne looked down into her hands and saw it was actually a pregnancy test. Her eyes widened in panic.

*Don't look at me. Do it. Now.* Oné ordered. She glared at her harshly but then as Michonne watched, with her back fully to the door she brought one slender finger to her full lips and closed one eye in a slow, pronounced wink. *Do not make me have to call someone in to make you squat. Do it.*

Despite knowing now that it was part of some plan she and Ariane had cooked up, Michonne was terrified. She did as instructed and turned the soiled stick back over to Oné, who then wrapped it in a small rag.

*Good Girl.* The woman said tucking the rag into the folds of her garment before pulling out another one surreptitiously. *François, get in here.*

The young sentry that stood stone-faced at the door came in quickly.

*Go give this to your boss.* She said in Swahili, handing the replacement test to the young man, who clearly did not want to take it.

*I'm not supposed to leave my post.* The young man objected clearly disgusted by the idea of handling the used test.

*I have instructions to present this to him immediately.*

*Then why don't you go take it to him, Woman?* He retorted.

Oné spun on her heel and struck François across the face so quickly both he and Michonne were stunned. The crack of her hand against his flesh resounded through the room and into the hallway. *Excuse me?*

His jaw tightened and he glared at both her and Michonne but soon enough, he obediently took the test from her hand and excused himself.

Mama Oné looked behind her then back at Michonne. *It's fine. We have a pregnant mare in the back pasture,* She said.

Once she was sure he was well away, Michonne turned pleadingly to Oné.

*Now that he's gone, you could let me go.*

Oné's face stilled, losing the softness it had had a moment before. *No.*

*You could say I overpowered you and then escaped.*

*No.* The woman answered again simply. *He is not an idiot and only an idiot would believe that.*

Oné flexed her fingers and closed them into a fist as if to illustrate her point. Despite her superior size and build however, Michonne was fairly certain with the self-defense techniques she'd learned from Rick and Shane, she could take her.

*Even if you did, you'd never make it off the compound.* Oné said calmly as if she could read Michonne's thoughts as she was having them.

Michonne felt the tears pooling and burning at the back of her eyes but she refused to let them fall. She wouldn't risk harming Oné on the off chance she could make some sort of get away.

*I could try.* She said futilely nonetheless.

"No." Oné said firmly, glancing quickly behind herself.

*Why are you even helping me then? If you won't help me get away from here, why help me at all?* Michonne lashed out even though she promised herself she wouldn't. She moved toward the cell doors even as Oné stood between her and them. She contemplated rushing her and she knew that the woman knew it as well.

"Listen to me, I do not care about you, but I would not lie. Not now. You _will not_ make it. Even if you make it past me. Be smart. Be patient." Oné had switched suddenly to a crisp English.

"Patient? You're talking about my life! Someone wants me dead. Sooner rather than later."

"I have just given you eight months to figure things out."

"You've given me eight days! Seven really. I don't know how you think this is going to work. Why are you even doing this?"

Oné walked to the cell door and pushed it open moving to the side so Michonne could see what lay beyond in the hallway. Another sentry stood in François' place.

"Because, I was not put on this planet to do everything that man says. And if I can occasionally complicate his life, I will," She continued in English to make sure the sentry didn't understand. "For the little bird, and for my daughter Lucille."

In that moment, she realized she was to be a pawn in whatever interpersonal struggle Oné was having with Ngangabouka. To her credit, Ariane had been smart enough to tap into that. But Michonne wasn't comfortable leaving her fate up to the spiteful nature of Ngangabouka's wives.

* * *

Hours later, Michonne lay at the heavy door listening at its base for the sounds she could hear coming under it. In the fifteen hours since her conversation with Oné she'd spent at least ten of them like that. She realized the woman was right. If she was to be saved, she'd have to do it herself, using nothing but her smarts. Under those circumstances, she had not yet worked out her plan but she needed time. Time a fake pregnancy could give her, but the first order of business was to be working out a means of escape from that cell. She would determine where and how she would get away from there. She listened to the soldiers' foot-falls and for the way their voices echoed as they moved down the halls looking for patterns. She listened for ambient noises too, whether she could detect water running or hear wind flowing through corridors. It was a tedious, brain-numbing exercise but forced her to concentrate on things besides her impending death.

She scrambled back to her pallet when she heard someone coming, turning to face the wall as the door swung open.

"Doctor Pritchard," The voice behind her said jovially and Michonne's whole body clenched in terror.

Turning slowly as he entered the cell, Michonne looked at Dwight.

She nearly recoiled in revulsion. He was not the man she had met months earlier. His face was a horror. Where once there had been smooth, nut-brown skin covering his rodent-like narrow face, he was now covered in pink, raw burns. One whole half of his face was given over to melted angry flesh. The fire had charred one nostril and drawn out the eye and the corner of his mouth in such a way that liquid constantly seeped from them.

Michonne blinked multiple times trying to adjust to the grotesquery of his new visage. This is what Nyokato was referring to when she'd said Dwight was angry about his punishment. For burning Ariane's mother alive, he'd been burned alive as well. Michonne had heard that DaDa had very peculiar ideas of justice, and yet she'd still had no clue.

Seeming to read her thoughts through her expression, Dwight lashed out angrily. He grabbed Michonne off her pallet by a handful of her locs, wrenching her to her feet in front of him. Michonne cried out, slapping him across the face. He hissed in pain before reaching back and punching her. The blow seemed to contain all his pent up rage as it connecting with her bottom lip and jaw. It was only the fact that her chin was slightly elevated that prevented Michonne from losing teeth in that blow. As it was it sent her flying back into the wall behind her, with such force she blacked out briefly. If she wasn't concussed from her previous assault she was sure to be now.

*Enough!* A woman's voice declared in French.

*Don't touch me!* Someone demanded and then there was a scuffle and labored grunts.

When Michonne opened her eyes again, to her surprise, the sentry François that was usually posted at her door was standing inside holding Dwight back by his arms. Beside him stood Ariane, who bent quickly then to help Michonne back to her feet.

"Are you alright?" She asked holding Michonne steady by her elbow. She draped her arm around Michonne's shoulders.

It was an odd mirror image of how they first met.

Michonne nodded shakily as copious amounts of blood dribbled out of her mouth and down from her badly split lip as her jaw began to swell and her skin of her cheek tightened.

*You get out now!* Ariane directed forcefully.

Michonne had noticed in the day and a half she'd been there that the men deferred to Ariane and Mama Oné. It made her wonder at the organizational structure of the compound. It was clear neither of them had the power to order her release but short of that, they seemed to have the run of the place.

*Bitches.* Dwight spat as the sentry dragged him out. He shot daggers at Michonne and Ariane.

"He found out?" Michonne whispered as they watched him go down the hall.

"I had to tell," Ariane admitted. "If I had lied to DaDa, my punishment would have been worse than his."

"It's okay Ane, I understand," Michonne said patting Ariane's hand consolingly.

"It was a good thing too because Maggie's boyfriend told DaDa he saw me at your big mission place. He told DaDa everything. Luckily, he already knew. He thought it was funny."

"What? Wait, Shane? You know Shane?" Michonne had difficulty grasping both parts of that story. "And funny, why funny?"

"I do not know him," Ariane clarified. "I told DaDa Maggie was my friend. I told him how I had met her when he and her boyfriend went fishing at Lake Kivu and —"

"When they did _what_?" Michonne pulled herself out of Ariane's arms so they could look at each other face to face. "Has Maggie met Ngangabouka?"

"Oh, not that she knows of, no. Not that I know of either, not directly," Ariane explained. "Her boyfriend, Shane? He brought her to Kivu to see the market and speak to the refugee people and he went to the lake to fish."

Michonne sighed with relief while still bewildered. Knowing Shane and Rick, just as Michonne did, Maggie would have had no reason to question that arrangement. Fishing was one of their favorite pastimes when they were on leave. It was not unlike them to take off with a local guide for a long weekend of beer, fishing and as Michonne liked to call it, "boy bonding time". Knowing that, even without Rick there as his fishing buddy, there would have been nothing to arouse suspicion in Maggie. She'd willingly spend a few hours alone in town speaking with the locals to allow her boyfriend a chance to do his thing. Still, Michonne shuddered at how close that meant her friend had come to meeting a madman. Her blood boiled at the idea that Shane could have brought her anywhere near him.

"I had seen him before, seen him waiting in the market, seen him with DaDa and Dwight but he did not know me," Ariane explained. "Then I met Maggie in the market at my mother's stall. Whenever they would meet, DaDa would bring me along so that I could see my mother and the other women of my village...to visit with them. I didn't know she was with DaDa's man until after, when I came to the mission place and met you."

 _DaDa's man_. Michonne's ears rang. _It was Shane._ Shane was the American Nyokato had been telling her about. Shane was the one with Rick's accent that she saw occasionally in the Market. The more things fell into place the more sickened Michonne felt. It had all been right in front of her face and yet somehow she'd managed not to see it. The feeling that if she could only have put two and two together faster she might have been able to save her own life gripped her.

Still, she didn't lose focus. It was Shane— the bastard— who left her in this position. He, who had marked her for death with his co-conspirators. _But why?_

"...DaDa thought it was funny that you had made a fool of Dwight. He does not think Dwight is very smart anyway but he is loyal," Ariane continued her story as Michonne only half-listened. "He does not mind that I am friends with Maggie as long as he thinks I do not tell her anything."

Michonne looked at Ariane. The young woman was playing a very dangerous game on both sides. Carrying information to Maggie while pretending that she wasn't, had jeopardized not only her and her family but Maggie as well.

"I do not really know anything," Ariane said as if reading Michonne's face. "DaDa is very careful. Mama Onè is the only one he trusts. I tell Maggie little things so that she will want to see me again."

Suddenly, she looked like a child again to Michonne, craving attention and a connection to someone, desperate to appear important.

"I know that is bad," She admitted.

"You're feeding Maggie lies," Michonne said out loud unintentionally.

Ariane's expression darkened. "I do not! I have only told her the truth. It is just nothing that she can use or tell to the mission-people."

It was an incredibly savvy statement. Michonne realized either Ariane was learning more than she would care to admit at her husband's feet or Ngangabouka was not yet aware of how clever and cunning his youngest wife was. Either way, Michonne understood suddenly that for all her help, Ariane may be someone to be weary of. Her face sobered as she watched Michonne watch her.

"Come now. He is here." The innocent look Michonne had frequently seen fell away from the girl's visage. "We can't keep him waiting. He doesn't like that."


	30. Chapter 30

7/27/15 09:39 CAT

Medical Station Omicron, Rwanda

"Michonne?" Rick called out when he felt her go limp in his arms. "Michonne?"

He shook her in alarm.

The man at the door, Scott, who had been explaining something to Glenn stopped and came up to Rick, placing his fingers under her chin.

He looked up into Rick's face and smiled reassuringly. "She just passed out. She's okay for now. Follow me."

He walked them down three successively longer corridors toward the interior of the building. He used his keycard at the end of each hall to open a sliding glass door. The temperature dropped as they cleared each doorway, with the air getting crisper and seemingly thinner as they entered. For Rick, it resembled the recirculated air one found on a commercial jet. He actually felt a little light-headed for a brief moment. He paused then leaning against the wall at his side worried he might drop Michonne under the strain of her dead weight and the thin air.

"Gimme a second please," He requested, adjusting her in his arms yet again.

"Take deep breaths." Scott instructed. "It's actually only a different concentration of O2 than you're used to."

Sasha gasped. "What's going on?"

"We have to control the airflow for infection control purposes. You'll acclimatize in a few minutes. A number of doors are also hermetically sealed because of the possible contamination risk. You do know what sort of facility this is?" Scott asked swiping a keycard through a keypad beside the final door.

"Yes. That's why we came."

Scott turned slightly to look at him.

"I mean, because we know you're a medical facility. As you can see, we have injured personnel," Rick clarified.

"But _how_ did you know is what I'm wondering? Although, I don't know why I'm asking, he knew too. Apparently it's the worst kept secret in the Southern Hemisphere," Scott said in a low tone of voice over his shoulder as if he didn't want anyone overhearing.

"We knew because we've got a USAMRIID scientist with us whose brother is a member of the National Security Council. That's how we knew. Who is this other guy? How'd he know?" Rick countered, following Scott through the doors and into a large atrium.

The outside gave no clue to how large the facility was inside. He turned and saw Glenn looking around in awe as well. They followed their guide to an elevator bank and waited.

"We have no idea. He's a local warlord famous in this country for what he did during the genocide. No one seems to remember everything he's done since then. His name is Negan."

Rick had to readjust Michonne in his arms to keep from dropping her when he heard the name. He turned toward Glenn and the young private seemed to read his expression immediately beginning to turn around with Sasha in tow when the elevator door opened.

"Captain Rick, I presume. Boy, I've _always_ wanted to meet you," A tall, barrel-chested man wearing a big toothy smile stepped off the elevator with a small group of armed men. "Scott, Scottie man, why are you trying to ruin my surprise?"

The large man cowered at Negan's words. Though they were the same height and nearly the same build, Scott was made slight by his obvious fear.

"I, I didn't mean anything. He asked who you were."

"But what did I tell you about speaking without my permission? Am I gonna have to cut your tongue out or are you going to learn some self control?"

"I asked, it's not his fault," Rick interjected.

"Did I ask you?" Negan turned on him sharply.

He walked in circle around Rick as he was holding Michonne. He inspected them while throwing amused glances at his eerily silent cadre of soldiers. Then he paused to look over Glenn and Sasha, who was now standing on her own feet.

"All these people speaking out of turn. You folks are new so I understand that you didn't know any better. But _et tu_ , Scot-te?"

Scott shook his head, looking at the ground with his shoulders hunched.

 _Broken._ Rick could see it. The bodies outside, that had been all about breaking the ones left. Judging by Scott, he had effectively pulled them all in line, lest they get any ideas.

"How's she doing?" Negan asked walking up close to Rick and reached for Michonne's face.

Without taking even a moment to think about it, Rick stepped back. The two men exchanged a brief but charged look, fired with a battle yet to come. Then, just as easily, Negan's face broke into a smile again, pearly white and toothy, like a predator sizing up his next meal.

"Oh I heard all about you two," He clicked his tongue. "You came to my house, broke up my shit and killed some of my friends. You even separated me... _temporarily_ from some of my money. Given all that, tell me Captain, why should I help you?"

Rick looked back over his shoulder at Glenn and Sasha, who were both following the conversation with interest. He felt guilty. Neither of them really knew Rick or Michonne from Adam, he realized. And he'd only told them the bare minimum of his and Michonne's experiences in the region. Until now, no one in their group, with the possible exception of Mamet, had any idea what their dossiers looked like. Yet, he'd unwittingly led this group into a years-old conflict, made them a part of his history **.** Effectively pulling them out of the frying pan and putting them solidly into the fire.

"Don't look at them! You look at me and tell me why I shouldn't lock you and her in a room and let you sit and watch her bleed the fuck out? Then maybe, as a bonus, I let you watch me cut the gimpy chick's _other_ hand off and feed it to the Chinese kid?"

"I'm Korean," Glenn muttered before Rick could shake his head to discourage him.

He and Sasha didn't have any idea what kind of creature they were dealing with. They didn't realize he could, if the mood struck him, make good on every one of his threats.

"And _I'm_ not giving a shit. Speak again when I'm not talking to you and I'll feed you your lips as the first course," Negan snapped.

Glenn looked briefly at the floor, similar to Scott, who hadn't moved a muscle since he'd been told to be still minutes ago. Negan looked at them all again before turning his attention back to Rick. His face gave nothing away, he wasn't even angry. It was as blank and emotionless as the sociopath Rick knew he was.

"You haven't answered my question. I feel like I should let you know, I don't like that. Not one bit. _Why. Should. I. Help. You_?"

"She's dying."

"So what?" Negan retorted. "I'll throw a party."

Rick couldn't believe it. Here he was, in the same part of the world, doing virtually the same thing yet again. Trying to escape from this madman with their lives. He closed his eyes. Nothing but the truth had any hope of saving them now.

"We're searching for a cure," He admitted.

"A cure for what? Hopefully, my boredom." He laughed at his own joke. His men followed suit like obsequious children.

"For the pandemic."

Negan shot him a disbelieving look. "Okay. Maybe you forgot but I know what you do, Soldier Boy. I know what she does too and neither of you are doctors. So what snake-oil are you trying to sell me?"

"We've been empowered by the United Nations to track down the source of the epidemic. You do know we worked for the UN, right? Michonne now works for the CDC. That's the Centers—"

"For Disease Control in America. I know. I can read a book," Negan cut him off hastily. It was obvious he was considering the veracity of Rick's statement.

"I don't know how verifiable any of that is now."

"Oh we've still got limited Internet access over a secured line, isn't that right, Scottie?"

"Y-yes," Scott answered looking up suddenly like a toy that had just been activated.

"One of the benefits of American hospitality. So I can check at least some of your story out. And if I find out you're lying, I'll cut the power to her operating theater. Then we can both sit and watch her die on the table together. We clear?"

Rick nodded slowly. _Out of the frying pan and into the fire._

"Simon," Negan called to a lanky young man standing to his right, who perked up immediately like an attentive puppy. "Help Scott take these ladies down to see the doctors."

Scott came up and took Michonne from Rick arms gently. The man called Simon mumbled something in a broken English to Sasha before she and Glenn followed him to the elevator.

"Alvin and Theodore, you get to play host. Make sure we've separated the rest of the Captain's group from their weapons and then bring them in," Negan directed as Rick just watched him. Everyone obediently sprang into action and before long they stood in the atrium completely alone.

Negan pressed the call button for the elevator, rocking on his heels. He stuck his hands into the pockets of his trousers, whistling companionably as if he hadn't recently just threatened the lives of various people. He looked at Rick briefly then went back to staring at the numbers counting down on the display above the doors.

Rick watched him flabbergasted by what had just happened and how quickly the tide had seemed to turn. Michonne had told him that long ago, about how mercurial Negan could be. One minute your life was in danger and the next it was as if you were his best friend. Right now, for whatever reason, they had his favor. _Temporarily,_ Rick had no doubt. Despite everything, he knew they'd still be lucky to all leave that place alive.

"What?" Negan asked defensively when he caught Rick staring. " _Oh them?_ I don't know if you could see it but they're brothers. And when I got them as kids, they had these ridiculous pudgy cheeks. All three of them. So I just started calling them Alvin, Simon and Theodore."

A chill ran through Rick at how casually he spoke of former child soldiers that he'd clearly stolen from their parents.

Negan continued whistling.

"I'll be perfectly honest, I don't even remember what their real names are anymore."

The elevator dinged and the doors opened. "Alright Captain, now let's see how far down this rabbit hole really goes."


	31. Chapter 31

*** Author's Note***

Hey Guys, as ever, thanks for reading!

Also, double update, Yay! As always, another short chapter means two-for-one days. As an aside, like I've said before I'm loving your comments. Everybody is so passionate with their love/hate (particularly for Shane). I'm really getting a kick out of that! Likewise, you guys are bowling me over with how great you are at guessing the turn of events. It wasn't my intention to make this story like an episode of Scandal or HTGAWM with a plot twist every two seconds but I know I've already had a few and there are possibly a couple more to come. ;-) I mention that to say, there has not been _one_ twist or turn that some one (or more) of you haven't predicted ahead of time. I'm going to flatter myself here by saying, I don't think it's because I'm doing a crap job but because my story is being followed by a bunch of smart cookies who are really into it! LOL! So, thank you again for your enthusiasm. I love you guys, seriously! And consider this a virtual hug from me to you!

May 7th, 2011

Kisangani, DRC

Rick stood out on the balcony of his apartment overlooking the street below. It was the wee hours of the morning. Only the baker on the corner and the little, shriveled, old man who cleaned the streets were out. He stood there staring at a half-empty pack of cigarettes Shane had left him when he made the move to Maggie's place. It wasn't, by far, the only thing Shane had left but it was the most curious. Rick hadn't touched a cigarette since they were both teens and he would have sworn the same was true for Shane. Up until that moment, he had thought any cigarette smoke he smelled on the guy was from the bars they frequented.

 _Goes to show what he knew—_

It had gotten to the point where finding Shane's little odds and ends all over amused Rick more than anything else. He was normally such a neat freak that if Rick had thought to complain, he knew Shane would be mortified. The truth was, it was all Maggie's fault. Despite appearances to the contrary, she was actually pretty devout, not unlike her dad. Someone who ultimately had difficulty with the idea of "living in sin". As a result, Shane had been, in essence, straddling their two places for the past few months. Rooming with Rick in theory while spending most nights at Maggie's. So now, his shit randomly popped up everywhere. Still, that morning it had been strange to find an abandoned pack of smokes.

Rick contemplated it as he shook a cigarette out of the pack, hitting it against the flat palm of his hand until one slid out. Shane had been really weird the day before. But really, everything was topsy-turvy right now. Rick fondled the cigarette between his fingers, reacquainting himself with the feel while he decided whether or not the current situation was really dire enough to reignite a bad habit. He honestly didn't know. Rick realized then, he knew nothing about Shane's apparent smoking habit, nothing about what was happening in Shane's head right now, nothing about Michonne's either, nothing about why she would leave, or where she would go. Really, he knew nothing about anything at all...

* * *

Going to Michonne's apartment the day before with Maggie had been something of a dead end, but still a frightening one. Walking into her empty place behind someone else was eerie. Every corner of the house, though sparse, was filled with her. He'd never noticed in all his visits how much it even smelled like her and the uniquely scented lotion she used. The whole house exuded her, all over lay trinkets she'd acquired on her travels throughout the continent. Some walls held paintings by local artists and on the tabletops, pictures of her friends. The end table in her living room held particularly prized photos of her with her aunt and cousin and with her parents. While a large framed collage with pride of place in her bedroom contained pictures from a trip they'd all taken years earlier to Marrakech. That had been a particularly meaningful journey for him as well because it was the only trip overseas he had ever managed to coax Lori on.

He lifted the frame up off Michonne's bureau and took a long time examining it closely. They all looked so young and stupidly happy in the pictures. Shane constantly mugging for the camera to impress his newest girlfriend. Lori, Michonne and a friend, whose name Rick had long since forgotten, looked as chummy as lifelong friends. Carl, left at home with all their other adult responsibilities, had been maybe five at the time. So for the entire trip, it had been like when they were teenagers again. Rick recalled with a wistful sigh that the whole vacation, up to and including inviting Lori along, had been Michonne's idea. Rick suddenly didn't know how he would handle finding out something had happened to her. As he returned the frame to the tabletop, he could barely stomach the thought.

Maggie discovered Michonne's drawers had been opened and rifled through with some of the clothes removed. But a check of her closet revealed her infamous dark brown duffle was still there. It was her trusty companion. As far as Maggie and Rick were both concerned, she wouldn't go anywhere without it and the myriad of things it contained. The very fact that it was still there was all the confirmation Rick needed that something was very wrong.

Nevertheless, their gut feelings weren't enough reason for him to involve the authorities. And as Shane had been annoyingly quick to remind them, she was a grown woman. It was a difficult thought for him to consider but Michonne could take off whenever she felt like. She didn't really have an obligation to alert anyone of any non-work related travel plans…except possibly Stavros.

* * *

So, when Rick and Maggie came back to the Mission entirely empty-handed, it was Stavros he went to see first.

"Stav, now I know I can't directly ask you about anything related to the investigation but I think I should be allowed to ask whether or not it's turned up anything that is potentially dangerous to my staff," Rick said sitting in the Head of Mission's office and bringing him up to speed.

Stavros Xenakis was a short, stocky, red-faced man who smiled easily and enjoyed a well-told joke. He was a soft-spoken, thoughtful man that rarely raised his voice, but frequently frowned to indicate his displeasure. He reminded Rick of Hershel in that way and as a result, they maintained a very good working relationship. In general, with Stavros, the deeper the frown lines were in his round, bespectacled face, the greater his annoyance. So, at that moment, Rick could tell he was livid.

"Quite frankly Rick, I couldn't tell you," He admitted with frustration. "The Americans have shut me out almost entirely."

It was always odd to Rick to hear the USAfriCOM forces referred to as "The Americans", since he was obviously one too. Then it was stranger yet to hear Stavros say it in the rather broad Midwestern accent he'd acquired from spending the majority of his life since graduating from the University of Michigan working as a Greek diplomat within the United States. And yet, Rick acknowledged, it was clearly the aptest description of the group when they insisted on drawing such a deep line of division between themselves and the nation-less UN group.

Typically in this country, but especially in Kisangani, anyone would have described the UN Mission's relationship with AfriCOM as a thriving, symbiotic one. One where the officers and staff on both sides worked together well, sharing necessary resources. It was a relationship where, in this city, they also enjoyed a slight extracurricular rivalry that enhanced their mutual social lives rather than hindered them, complete with competitive intramural sporting teams and frequent interagency friendships and romances. But lately, Stavros explained, especially since Michonne's revelation, AfriCOM had become a closed circle.

"Do you have any reason to suspect Michonne's disa-, um, absence from work today is related to what she told us?"

Rick knew Stavros was reluctant to use the "d- word" or anything of that nature because it set UN protocols into motion that couldn't be stopped even if Michonne walked into his office an hour later perfectly safe and sound. It was a trigger they couldn't un-pull. Plus, it was just too soon and she hadn't been missing long enough to merit it. They were both also acutely aware that Michonne could not afford to be the face of another of these types of emergencies, not so soon after the first. Her career wouldn't survive it. Rick just had to begrudgingly acknowledge that though his intuition and many years of experience screamed at him to take this all very seriously, Stavros was in the right. _They needed proof._

"No," Rick answered honestly, reluctantly. "But how could it not be?"

He leaned forward in his chair. "C'mon Stavros, three months after she blows the whistle on corruption in their offices, she goes missing?"

Even as he said the words, Rick's heart thundered. There was no need to articulate it any further, she'd put a target on her own back and they'd helped her to do it. All the while promising her anonymity. It upset Rick further to know this was all as a result of being mixed up in something she'd stumbled upon and actually knew nothing about.

"Rick, you know I can't march in there making _additional_ wild accusations without some sort of proof. And as it stands now, we don't know that she isn't off doing a home visit or better yet taking a break. God bless her, she needs it," Stavros irritatingly echoed Shane's words.

Rick bristled despite how true it was. Months ago, when Michonne left the more cushy posting in the Main Mission in Kinshasa to come to Kisangani, it had been to fill the posts left by _two_ vacating UN investigators. To her credit, she had managed to do it well, gracefully and tirelessly. She was ably accomplishing the work of two people after only a few short months. But Rick also knew she was very independent and would be slow to admit if she felt overwhelmed. She'd always been that way, for as long as Rick had known her. It wasn't impossible to think the workload and current hostile environment might have taken its toll. That was all true. Intellectually, he had to acknowledge that she could have just decided she needed a break.

But Rick really didn't think so.

He knew in his heart she would have told him or Maggie if something was up, even if she didn't tell anyone else. But now that natural stoicism she always displayed meant in her possible time of need, there was no one to ring the alarm. No one else who recognized something was very wrong. _No one but him._

"Look," Stavros sat behind his desk and crossed his arms patiently over his chest. "I can give you permission to search for her. I _cannot_ authorize you to investigate Ngangabouka's supply chain on your own and find out if Michonne's absence today is somehow involved. ...Still, if the two things just so happen to intersect...well, that would be a _totally_ unexpected development. And what could I do about that?"

He shrugged with faux innocence while his eyes indicated nearly the opposite. Stavros sighed heavily as if he were on the verge of delivering bad news.

"That said, I _absolutely_ cannot give you any time off for any of this." Stavros cracked a smile at Rick.

"But I believe I saw that you have some unused vacation time you weren't able to take when you changed positions. If you wanted to use that now, I certainly couldn't stop you. That goes for anyone else who decides to help you as well. Although, let me be clear, they are, in no uncertain terms, absolutely forbidden from doing that." Then he gave Rick a reassuring wink. "You let them know they'll be on their own personal time too."

With that, for the first time in hours, Rick felt like he could breathe again.

* * *

Yet now, even hours later, as he stood looking out on the dawn and holding Shane's cigarettes, Rick felt a creeping anxiety. He went to Maggie's and then back to Michonne's again attempting to retrace her every step, but Rick couldn't shake the feeling that crucial information was missing and their time was slipping away. Trying to even find a breadcrumb had been fruitless thus far. His intuition told him Michonne had been snatched right off the street but no one had seen anything. No one knew anything. There were no leads, no clues, nothing at all for him to go on.

Michonne had simply vanished into thin air.


	32. Chapter 32

7/27/15 18:28p CAT

Medical Station Omicron, Rwanda

" _Fuck."_

Michonne knew her response should have been more emphatic or even more panicked. She knew this man, Ngangabouka, knew what he was capable of. So maybe it was the medication, still flowing from the IV into her arm. Or maybe it was the fact that they'd already faced so much in the past three days. Or maybe it was just the fact that the world had changed so drastically since the last time she'd been face to face with him. But whatever the reason, she just wasn't able to manufacture the requisite response to this dire information. She couldn't come up with anything stronger than a single expletive. Still, with a burst of energy and a great deal of effort, she swung her legs off the side of the bed.

"What on earth are you doing?" Carol asked appropriately alarmed to see Michonne trying to pull herself out of bed. "Where are you going?"

"To find Rick."

"Michonne, this is NOT a good idea. You're only five hours post-op. You need to wait a little longer before you can even stand safely," Denise echoed.

Michonne looked at them both with their twin concerned faces but continued trying to maneuver herself off the bed. She understood possibly Carol's confusion, not grasping that they were currently sheltered with a lunatic, but she didn't understand Denise's casual demeanor.

"I have to see Rick. If you won't help me get up then get out of my way," she said quietly but deadly serious.

Carol only considered it for a moment before she pulled the wheelchair from the far corner of the room where it sat and wheeled it to Michonne's bedside. After a short staring contest, Denise sighed resignedly and helped them. Michonne bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to utter a single whimper as they helped her down into the chair.

"Dr. Cloyd, can you show me where they are?" Michonne said from between her teeth, pulling her hospital gown tight around her.

Carol looked down at her with concern but remained silent, just positioning herself behind the chair prepared to push.

The doctor nodded simply, transferring her IV bag from the pole beside the bed to the chair and then led the way. As they made their way down the stark achromatic hall, Michonne was unsettled by how quiet and deserted everything seemed. All the walls were made of a frosted glass that at once gave the feeling of privacy and yet exposure, revealing room after empty room. The smooth, silent floors of the corridors gleamed so much the light bounced off them, making Michonne want to squint.

"Doctor, why is this here? I mean, is this the only facility of its type?" Michonne asked as they followed behind her.

Denise hesitated briefly before speaking. "It's the only facility of its kind on this continent, yes."

She spoke diplomatically, strategically. 'On _this_ continent.' _Right._ Michonne recognized this tactic instantly, herself being tasked with providing a similar service to the CDC until very recently.

"Meaning there are others elsewhere?

"The old world is done, Dr. Cloyd. Maybe you don't know because you've been stuck in here for a week but there's nothing left...anywhere that we know of," Carol prodded her.

Denise looked stricken at the other woman's words. "Toledo?"

Carol shook her head grimly and Denise's eyes filled with tears.

"Wait, a _week_? You've been in here a week already? How?" Michonne asked appalled. "The first cases were only confirmed four days ago."

"More like a six days ago, Sleeping Beauty," Carol explained. "We've been operating on some bad intel."

Clearly, information had been shared while she was incapacitated that deviated strongly from the briefing she and Rick got aboard the Ticonderoga.

Denise nodded. "Yes. We got the first inkling of this last week. We received a weakened strain from Upsilon Station on the 20th. We are the experts on emerging hemorrhagic disea—"

"Upsilon? So there are _twenty_ of these places all over?" Michonne asked incredulously

"Oh no, there's one on every continent."

"So seven, then?" Carol clarified.

"Except Antarctica, and there are two in North America."

"Why?" Michonne asked.

"Because the purpose of these facilities is principally to keep the American public safe. We do that by monitoring health crises on all continents."

"Secretly?" Michonne queried skeptically.

"Not every country is interested in our assistance. But an out of control contagion is, like a brush fire, content to burn irrespective of boundaries, physical or ideological." Denise crossed her arms defensively. "We can't allow that."

"Seems like you guys did a pretty piss poor job of keeping an eye on this one, Doc!" Carol spat back nastily.

Denise was silenced instantly, blinking repeatedly in shock. Michonne was pretty surprised herself. Only in that moment did Michonne remember that Carol's daughter was among the hundreds unaccounted for in whatever insanity had taken place in Pensacola —she'd only overheard smatterings of what happened— but from what she had gathered from various seamen aboard the Ticonderoga, it involved military personnel erroneously locking dozens of infected in with hundreds of others.

"Do you have any idea what happened?" Michonne asked trying to right the derailed conversation.

Denise stopped in front of the first door, key card frozen in hand and turned to look from Michonne to Carol behind her. It didn't take a particularly incisive mind to discern that Dr. Cloyd appeared to be a relatively fragile woman, a quiet intellectual unaccustomed to being treated the way Carol just had. How she managed to survive Ngangabouka's rampage through the facility was now a source of interest to Michonne.

Carol seemed to come to the same conclusion at the same time. "Denise, I'm so sorry. I'm just tired. As you can imagine there hasn't been an awful lot of time to get any sleep. And this whole thing has been so stressful. I really don't know what came over me just now."

Michonne's body ached as she craned her neck to look up at Carol's face but she did it anyway. She just had to make sure the voice was coming out of the same mouth she remembered. In the past forty-eight plus hours she'd known her, Michonne had never once heard Carol use that tone of voice. She could only imagine it was the way she spoke to her small daughter, soothing, warm, somewhat patronizing. Although even that, the knowledge that Carol was someone's mother, had been hard for Michonne to reconcile when Rick initially told her. She just didn't seem to have a maternal bone in her entire body until a second ago.

"Of course, I understand." Denise's apprehension subsided. "We received word of an unusual outbreak on the 19th. It was determined—"

"The _nineteenth_?" Carol barked again. "God, that must have been so nerve-wracking for all of you."

Michonne smiled seemingly with encouragement at Denise but really with admiration at how nimbly Carol self-corrected.

"Yes, it was. At that point, they had just asked us to look into it, try to identify the pathogen from the sample they were going to send us. They had no idea what it was. And despite the fact that we have elaborate infection-control procedures to prevent it, within hours of receiving the samples, we had an infected clinician."

Michonne looked at her wide-eyed. "If you had an infected in here how did you manage to survive it? From what I thought I understood, getting a live sample has been particularly difficult because it jumps hosts so efficiently. Once one person is infected isn't it like a domino effect?"

"That's true. But it was an attenuated— _weakened_ —strain. Full-blown infection took hours not minutes. Our first lab to handle materials from a live specimen had a contamination accident but was able to begin the decontamination protocol. Unfortunately, they became unresponsive in a matter of hours after sending out their samples. So we got no further information but still we had a better idea of what had to be done."

"The first lab?"

"Yes."

"And by a 'live specimen', you mean a person?"

Denise nodded reluctantly. "For a while, at least."

"Where was that?" Michonne asked.

"That was Delta station, just outside of Incheon."

" _South_ Korea?"

"Yes." Denise nodded pushing through the hard resistance of the pressurized door. "You seem to be relatively informed. This isn't what you were told?"

"No, we were told the first documented infection was of someone found wandering near the DMZ."

Denise pondered that. "Incheon lies close to the border, but not close enough to account for that."

"So we're talking at least two different possible Patient Zeros. Meaning, of course, that neither of them were," Michonne said angered.

After moving through yet another heavy glass door, they stopped in front of an elevator. Carol moved to her side and gave Michonne a look she couldn't quite decipher.

"The right hand clearly did not know what the left was doing." Carol clarified under her breath after looking down at Michonne's puzzled expression.

"Look, it is likely that we knew what was happening first but we are literally and figuratively siloed from the other operational structures of government. This is a military facility and we are not affiliated with any of the civilian public health apparatuses. We have no overlap with the NIH or the CDC. Internationally, we are unaffiliated with the WHO as well. It's very deliberately that way."

Denise spoke oblivious to the side exchange happening around her.

"Let me guess, plausible deniability, should anything go wrong?" Michonne offered.

Denise nodded again grimly. "And greater autonomy, meaning total freedom in operations. In this case, that sequestration was obviously to our detriment but generally—."

"This is the only case that's ever going to matter, Doctor," Carol added but in a much softer tone than Michonne imagined she wanted to use.

"You must understand, Lt. Peletier, we're meant to be like a first line of defense."

"But how could that possibly work when no one knows you exist?" Michonne asked genuinely confused. "When you report to no one?"

"We report to key decision-makers in the DOD and Executive Branch."

"Just not the Judiciary or Congress, so no oversight and no accountability to the public when you fuck up either. Nice," Carol muttered under her breath.

"But what now, Denise? If this was an experiment, it failed terrifically. And…" Michonne sighed deliberately speaking over Carol's mutterings. "Just, what now?"

She couldn't help but think of the job she and Rick had been tasked with. Clearly, they'd been sent off half-cocked with only a fraction of the information. Though who knew whose fault that was when the President and half the cabinet was unaccounted for. She wondered then, had they actually gotten to Korea what, besides a death-trap would they have even encountered? She nearly shuttered to think, not for herself but for their team and the service people in Turkey who had followed their orders and sacrificed their lives blindly.

"I suppose there's little point to secrecy now. Though this outpost as it exists now is relatively new –seven years– our arm of USAMRIID is almost as old as that organization itself. The 'experiment', as you called it, has largely been a success actually. We've kept biological agents and virulent pathogens out of major cities and kept epidemics –potentially fatal on a massive scale– from reaching the United States at all."

"Except when it really counted," Michonne said quietly.

Denise sighed herself as the elevator arrived with a minute ring and the doors smoothly and quietly slid open.

"No one could have been properly prepared for this, Ms. Philippe."

Carol pushed the wheelchair into the car and turned it silently. Michonne couldn't see her face as she stood behind her but she vividly imagined her companion's weary expression.

Dr. Cloyd pressed a button among a dozen others on the pad inside and again swiped her key card. _They weren't kidding about the security being tight._ They could barely move a few feet in any direction without requiring a security tag. Which automatically begged the question for Michonne of how Ngangabouka's men could possibly have broken in.

"The majority of the facility is underground. The operating rooms and patient care suites are at the lowest levels, so we'll be going up." Denise was explaining when Michonne tuned in to the conversation happening around her again.

The elevator whirred along, not unlike the unobtrusive hum of a monorail, calling to Michonne's mind a long ago family reunion in Disney World. At the time, Michonne couldn't fathom having that much family. Aunts, uncles and cousins she'd never laid eyes on before. Her mother's family had converged from seemingly all over and other than her grandparents, aunt Vicky and cousin Meredith, she didn't know anyone. Fresh tears came to her eyes when she realized all those people— originally twenty-five in number, but now numbering over a hundred strong, were likely all gone. And she was no closer to finding a clue to what killed them than she'd been yesterday morning aboard the ship.

"Are you alright?" Denise asked, bending at the waist to look at her face and check her pulse again.

"I'm fine," she replied softly. "Or I will be."

Michonne came to the realization then that the only "family" she had left in the world was either in undisclosed locations off the Atlantic coast or part of the rag-tag group held hostage upstairs. And all of them were waiting for her to report that they had found something, anything that could make a difference. Something that more than ever she wasn't in the position to do. She had a responsibility to these people that she had, unfortunately, been forced to temporarily set aside. There was an intense burning behind her eyes as she held back waiting tears yet again. This whole divergence had been for her benefit and knowing Rick she knew he thought he had no choice. But now was the time to get back on track and the first step to that was getting the hell out of this chair and then this building as quickly as possible.

"I'm fine," she reiterated firmly.

Denise's face clearly said she was trying to decide whether or not to believe Michonne but before she could make up her mind the elevator dinged to acknowledge that they'd arrived at their floor.

Michonne and Rick had once before slipped out of this man's grasp. They would just have to find a way to do it again.

 _They had had help that time that they were unlikely to find again._

Just then, the doors slid open and Michonne was gripped by a disorientation that rivaled when she came to in the recovery room. It felt like the overwhelming deja vu she got from hearing Ngangabouka's name again. A figure, like a ghost from her past, stood on the other side, as if waiting at a threshold to welcome her back into a past life.

"Hello, Michonne."

"Hello, Ariane."


	33. Chapter 33

May 7th 2011

Location Unknown, DRC

Michonne followed Ariane down the dark, dank corridor. Despite her accommodations, Michonne still had no clue that she was in an actual prison until she walked down a maze of cell-lined halls. But as the space opened up outside her cell block, it became very clear that was where they were. The other surprise was that her block of cells were the only ones used in a punitive manner. Once she was off her block with its solid, heavy iron doors that isolated her from the world, she saw traditional cells with only bars and cinder blocks separating them.

 _People were living in them!_

Curtains and assorted other modest decorations adorned the walls, providing only the smallest amounts of privacy. It reminded her easily of the refugee camps. Yet it was not a living she would have assumed anyone would willingly accept but here they were. She watched groups of people as she passed their quarters, dozens of men, and the occasional woman, reclined on small cots not much better than her own. Some sat at small tables, others carried on lively discussions with their neighbors. It was a thriving community within a prison as ordinary as some of the cul-de-sacs Michonne had visited at home in Atlanta.

"These are Ngangabouka's people?"

There was something so commonplace about it all, so human. The Saviors, as they had named themselves, had a reputation in the region that had risen to boogeyman status. And though she would never have admitted it in intellectual circles or at the elegant dinner parties for the consular community that Stavros' wife Athena threw, Michonne had bought into the hype as much as the locals had. The idea of these people genuinely frightened her. But seeing them now, what struck her most was that they were in fact flesh and blood people, a community like any other.

"Don't stare." Ariane whispered harshly.

Michonne looked down quickly before she caught any one person's eye, though she felt dozens of them following her. Ariane pushed through a door and the first burst of fresh air she'd had in over a day hit Michonne, washing over her. She breathed in deeply, appreciating the petrichor that blanketed the jungle around them after the rain the night before. It was the warm earthy scent right after a rainstorm that she'd loved since childhood, and for a brief moment it gave her succor in her despair.

"Hurry, he's waiting." Ariane insisted.

They cut across a wide dirt courtyard. The fences that bounded them were covered in flat and frayed tires of various sizes from bicycle to eighteen-wheeler. Amazingly, it provided an insulation that prevented people from both seeing in and out. The yard was filled with enough automotive junk to create an entire adult-sized jungle gym. In one corner, a row of clearly operational cars sat parked. Michonne made special notice of that as she attempted to orient herself. She looked quickly up at the sun, clocking its trajectory across the sky. Just that easily all the left and right turns she'd made behind Ariane began to make sense to her, her east and west revealing themselves. Deciding not to blindfold her for this trip across the compound was a tactical mistake. One she wondered if Ariane had made deliberately. A few more like that and Michonne was as good as gone.

*Something funny?* François, who she'd completely forgotten was trailing behind them, asked gruffly in Swahili.

Michonne shook her head demurely, finding a spot on the slipper-like shoe they'd given her in place of her original footwear, to stare at. Ariane looked back at her briefly after the guards words and frowned.

*I wouldn't be smiling if I were in your spot.* He reminded her.

They reached the other building, which looked to be the administrative hub of the original compound. Ariane banged on the door roughly with her fist until it opened.

*She's here.*

The person who opened the door stepped to the side to let them in. Michonne prevented herself from looking around too obviously. She was less interested in this building anyway other than as another way out. She could still make out the orientation of the corridors with her eyes turned down.

*You wait here.* Ariane said sternly in French once they entered into a large room. Her entire demeanor changed, which Michonne expected. This was the role of jailer she had to play.

People filled the room but parted neatly into two halves as Ariane approached the front of the room. Michonne kept her eyes down but felt others all over her, yet again. It was stunning to realize there were this many people under Ngangabouka's control in just this outpost alone. She'd spoken in intimate groups with important people and in large auditoriums to anonymous crowds and in neither experience had Michonne felt as unsure, exposed and vulnerable as she felt just moving through this crowd to the front of the room.

"Miss Philippe? Mrs. Philippe? _Mizz_ Philippe? I'm never clear on how that works, you Americans find such inventive ways to make an already difficult language harder. Well, _your_ reputation certainly precedes you. It's a kick to have you here. How you doin'?"

Michonne looked up directly into the dark eyes of Peter Ngangabouka, the infamous mass murderer, sitting patiently at the center of a large table. As if he were both judge and jury, he sat alone with a man to his right and a woman to his left, _Dwight and Mama Oné_. Neither sat, however, a symbol of his power all by itself. Even seated, he was an imposing man, clearly broadly-built and probably tall as well. Though common sense dictated that she should be frightened, Michonne was not. She looked directly back at him squaring her shoulders and preparing for anything. He frowned briefly looking her over.

"Has my little bird been treating you alright?" He asked cordially. It was difficult for Michonne to judge whether or not he was being facetious. "I want to make sure you're enjoying our hospitality."

Michonne nearly laughed then. "Hospitality? _Is this your hospitality_?" She pointed at herself. "You snatch me off the street. You throw me into a cell and your man there beats me…."

Ngangabouka threw up a hand to pause her. * _You_ did that to her, Dwight?* He asked incredulously in French.

He turned to his henchman with surprise. Dwight's eyes opened widely like a deer caught in headlights.

*I-I, no. I told you Tato did it.*

*He's lying! He did it today. I found him in her cell, attacking her.* Ariane said quickly, exactly as a tattletale child might, blurting it all out in one breath.

Dwight glared at Ariane. But she just looked right back at him impertinently. Even Oné looked at her curiously. Michonne wondered for a moment what exactly she was seeing.

*So not only did you disobey me but you _lied_ to me about it and tried to blame others?*

"Oh they beat me too." Michonne corrected in English.

"I'm not speaking to you right now, Ms. Philippe, so shut your mouth, please. I should tell you now I don't like being interrupted." Negan snapped at her instantly.

Michonne's mouth shut immediately, stunned by how quickly his mood and tone with her had turned on a dime.

He turned back to his Second expectantly. *You told me that Tato and Baptiste had been rough with her but she wasn't hurt. So clearly you're just a liar now? Is that's something you think you can be...with _me_?*

Ngangabouka looked up at the younger man and beckoned him closer with a finger. Dwight tried to explain himself briefly before hesitantly bending forward so that his face was level with Ngangabouka's. Just as quickly, Ngangabouka reached out and grabbed him by the neck, like a striking cobra, roughly pulling him closer until his mouth nearly touched Dwight's ear.

*Didn't Oné tell you about her condition? Didn't I tell you I had plans for her? Does she look to you like I like my women looking?* He rang Dwight's neck like one might a rubber toy.

Michonne thought for the briefest of moments to take issue with that characterization, she was not now nor would she _ever_ be one of Ngangabouka's "women". But watching the proceedings, she kept her mouth shut, thinking better of it. When Ngangabouka slammed Dwight face-first into the table in front of them a moment later, she realized it was for a good reason that she'd held her tongue.

*Answer me!* He pulled Dwight back by the neck so his ear was near his mouth again. *Does it?*

He drove Dwight's face back into the table with frightening force. When he relented finally, blood flowed from the young man's nostrils freely. Michonne couldn't manufacture any sympathy but it was still gruesome to behold. She refrained from averting her eyes, refusing to show any weakness.

*Did I tell you you could do that to her?*

Dwight shook his head as best he could with Ngangabouka's hand still wrapped firmly around his neck.

*No.* He sputtered, spitting blood everywhere.

*I think you owe Ms. Philippe an apology. What do you think?* He asked as if it were really a question and Dwight truly had a choice.

Michonne looked around the room. Oné's face was completely impassive, as was Ariane. Across the board, everyone looked entirely unmoved by the sudden violence. Some even appeared to be bored as if this happened too often to be notable. Michonne shuddered at the level of violence they seemed completely accustomed to. Despite having spoken to her fair share of despots, she was suddenly horrified.

Dwight nodded quickly, straightening up immediately when Ngangabouka released him. He grabbed the side of his neck with one hand and tried to stave off the flow of blood from his nose with the other. Oné handed her husband a clean cloth to wipe his hands off as Dwight struggled to gather himself.

"Well?" Ngangabouka said expectantly in English.

*Ms. Philippe, I sincerely apologize for my behavior. It will never happen again.* Dwight recited in a mannerly French from behind his hand with his head tilted back to stem the flow from his nose.

"Well, I wouldn't go quite that far," Ngangabouka corrected in English. "But he certainly won't without _my_ permission." He amended the other man's words menacingly with a reptilian smile on his face.

*Go clean yourself up and get Tato and Baptiste out of that damn hole. I should put you in there to replace them.* Ngangabouka said, to which Dwight seemed to genuinely shudder. *Don't you _ever_ lie to me again. The next time...there won't be a next time.*

There was no doubt, Ngangabouka was entirely serious. It was not a threat but a promise. Dwight hustled away quickly, his shoulders hunched and head bent like a beaten dog.

"Now where was I?" He asked the room in general.

"Actually, I was speaking," Michonne said to Ngangabouka's obvious surprise.

He seemed honestly amused by her assertiveness. "My apologies. What was it _you_ were saying?"

"You dragged me here for reasons I don't understand. I don't know what you want from me, Mr. Ngangabouka. What can I possibly do for you?"

"'Mr. Ngangabouka?' So proper. Quite simply _Miss_ Philippe, you can keep being you."

Michonne didn't understand what he meant but it worried her nonetheless. She crossed her arms in front of her. "If I'm truly your guest, I think I'm entitled to something better than a straw bed on a dirt floor."

"Done." He said looking at Oné, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

"Fresh clothes or at least an opportunity to wash the ones I'm wearing."

Ngangabouka nodded.

"And I'd like to take a shower and brush my damn teeth."

"Also done," A smile grew across Ngangabouka's face. "Anything else I can provide you with to make your stay with us better?"

"I'm assuming it would be pressing my luck to be able to contact my friends and tell them I was okay?"

"That it would." He said firmly but with the same twinkle in his eyes and amusement with which he'd entertained all of Michonne's other requests. "We don't want them knowing you're okay quite yet. 'Cuz, you never know, right?"

Michonne frowned.

"Oné told me that you're expecting? Congratulations and felicitations!" He said catching her off-guard suddenly. "Given what my man did to you, do you need the doctor? Do you still feel alright? "

Michonne gave one quick nod, still entirely uneasy with this lie. She was surprised by how genuine his concern was though and stole a glance at Ariane. The young girl clearly knew her 'husband'.

"Then we will endeavor to make you as comfortable during your stay as we can."

"My stay?" He'd used that word once already. Michonne didn't like how that sounded even as the impermanence of his word choice suggested some tiny bit of relief. This might actually be about using her not killing her, she realized. That put her in a far better place than she thought she was in a moment earlier.

"Yes, you are going to be with us for a little while."

"And _then_ what?" Michonne asked, dreading the answer.

"Well, that's entirely up to you and the people back home that claim to love you." He smiled in a way that didn't reach his eyes. "You and your baby can either return to them whole, none the worse for wear, or in pieces."

Michonne's mouth went dry as she realized that the smile on his face slipped not one inch as he spoke to her. In other words, he was entirely and deadly serious.

Later that evening, after having been moved into a genuine room away from the prison, but still behind a lock, key and armed guard that kept her trapped, Michonne joined Ngangabouka for dinner.

She'd been allowed the shower and toothbrush she was promised. Then, a "wife" she hadn't met before, named Marion, came and took her clothing, replacing it with a simple, but not inelegant shift dress. A chill ran down her spine when she realized that the dress was hers. One she hadn't worn in months. _These people had been in her home!_ The woman refused to speak at all, even as Michonne plied her with questions.

Afterward, Ariane and her guard, François came back to escort her into a gymnasium-style building within which held a large make-shift dining room. Ngangabouka presided over the mealtime ritual much like a king over his fiefdom. Michonne struggled to keep her disgust off her face and at bay as she, Oné and Ariane sat at the places set nearest him. They were followed by Dwight, all patched up but still fuming and miserable, along with Ngangabouka's other lieutenants.

Michonne looked around observing the pecking order. Just as in any other kingdom before it, Ngangabouka's dictated that those with the greatest status sat closest to him with the two score others set at cafeteria-style lunch tables farthest away. Some were not even granted seats at all, standing around the room acting as servers, while the punished were seated on the floor like untouchables. She watched as those on the floor tracked the plates of food as they were passed around the tables, clearly waiting for when scraps would cycle down to them. This was well beyond her level of tolerance. Dealing with militia leaders and warlords had trained her to look past the pomposity and pretension to try and find some common ground from which she could negotiate with them. But this was even beyond her level of empathy or understanding. The societal organization Ngangabouka encouraged, a caste system, a feudal serfdom of sorts, struck Michonne as particularly abhorrent.

"Feel better?" Ngangabouka asked genially, leaning forward so she could hear him over the din of nearly fifty people in one room. His frequently deployed smile reminded Michonne of nothing so much as a serpent.

She nodded rather than speaking.

"And dinner?" He asked, clearly pressing her into conversation, or else to thank him. She wasn't precisely sure which.

"It was good." She said struggling to give him something approaching a smile.

"I'm glad you enjoyed it." He said, finally satisfied.

"It is my hope to have this thing with you cleared up by the end of the week and you restored to your cute little house in Tshopo shortly." He mentioned her neighborhood and home, Michonne had no doubt, to illustrate how much he knew about her and how she'd always be just within his reach.

She looked at him blankly. She had no idea what he was talking about but she didn't believe for even a moment that he intended to or would release her after he got what he wanted. If she was going to leave this place, she knew, it would be on her own terms or she would never get away.

"Can I ask you a question?" She said after another moment.

"It depends." He said as serious as he always was while still wearing that deceptively pleasant smile. There were a lot of calculations going on behind his eyes but at some point he'd learned to hide it all behind an ingratiating smile. "No, really. Shoot."

Michonne paused for another moment before continuing, weighing him as he did the same to her. "How is your English so good? Have you been to America?"

He laughed heartily at that, throwing his napkin up on the table and turning toward her as if she'd hit upon his favorite topic. Michonne realized, dealing with a megalomaniac, she might have indeed...himself.

"Well, I was orphaned young and taken in by an American missionary school. The missionaries had their own son, David, that grew up with us. We all idolized him. And though he wasn't supposed to, he showed us all sorts of American movies and comic books and music. We lived for the stuff. He used to go home to the States every summer...grandparents or something, and he'd come back with treasure. He looked like Ponyboy from the _Outsiders_ and talked like Ferris Bueller..."

Michonne smiled at the description despite herself.

"We loved him. We wanted to be like him, act like him, sound like him. He was the best! Of all the boys, I was closest in age to him, so he and I were tight. But we were all thick as thieves. In a few years, we were like a little gang the other kids hated. They called us 'The Yankees', said we 'yanked' instead of talked but we knew. We were David's boys. I dreamed for many years of going to America and talking to other Americans that sounded just like us." Ngangabouka smiled and it was much more obviously from a real place than any of the other times Michonne had witnessed it.

 _That was interesting_.

"Of course, we all grew up and went our separate ways. But we still had our weird little way of speaking English in common. _Distinctive_. Eventually, David's parents retired back to the States and he became the headmaster at the school. He and I kept in touch though."

"Where is he now?" Michonne forced a smile as if she truly cared.

"Oh, he died." He said simply, surprising Michonne.

She sat in a stunned silence afraid to ask what had happened to him.

"He was killed along with the twenty Tutsi he was sheltering in his school during the war," Ngangabouka further answered, unprompted.

His smile fell away. "They'd all assumed that they wouldn't go into a school and actually drag people out. No one thought they'd do anything like that, even after they closed the border. Not to an American school. But see, the UN had come and evacuated all the Westerners hiding in there with them. And the militia knew it. Knew that was what had made the Tutsi, like my wife, think they'd be safe to hide at the school too— the fact that there were Americans hiding there— was no longer the case.

"All those Westerners that we had all thought were _so_ great didn't protect them or even shelter them, just fuckin' left them there. Ended up, only David stayed, because he had promised me he would. He'd sworn to keep my wife and her family safe when I brought them. So he did...or he tried. And for his trouble, the militia that came through gutted him too and burned the school to the ground."

Michonne was horrified. Though she wanted to harden herself to any possibility of sympathy for this horrible man, she couldn't help as the feelings came over her. Not so much for Ngangabouka himself, but surely for his unfortunate family, her heart broke.

"The building was nothing but ash by the time I came back looking for my people. Fire burned so hot, that there weren't even bones to find. It was as if the buildings, the same ones I grew up running in and out of had been completely wiped off the face of the planet. In their place was just a large patch of pitch black dirt and cinder block." His eyes took on the distant look of someone still trying to make sense of an incongruent memory.

"The only reason I even know what happened is because my wife's mother survived. She got out of the building as it burned with a knife in her chest and crawled into the tall grass to die. She was there for a day before someone found her and nursed her back to health in secret."

Michonne covered her mouth with her hand. Everyone knew of the atrocities, she'd even learned of some of them in school in Georgia as a teen. Still, nothing was comparable to the oral histories, which it was very specifically part of her job as a UN rapporteur to collect. It was easily the hardest part and even in a man as patently awful as Ngangabouka, it didn't ever get any easier to bare. Still, knowing this, it made it even more unfathomable that he could have now brought himself to perpetrate similar atrocities on others. He'd been accused of that and far worse during his time in power. It didn't make any sense. His experiences should have made such things anathema to him. Or so she would have thought.

" _Vengeance_ ," he said easily as if he had heard the unasked question in her head. "For my wife, for her family, for her mother who was raped repeatedly and then stabbed and left for dead. Now I live for that alone. And revenge on all those who failed my family."

Michonne stopped breathing for a moment. She watched his expression, it had changed very little, despite the horror of the story he'd just told. He wasn't smiling anymore but he was largely affect-less. _The sign of a true sociopath._ She was in the presence of a monster she understood yet again.

"I thought that that broke me, but it just changed me. Now I think of myself like Eastwood, 'The Man with No Name.' Like The Duke in _The Searchers_ —I know I'm alive for only one purpose— to stand up for all those who can't stand up for themselves. To avenge those who were failed by the people who were supposed to protect them."

Though he didn't say it, she knew he considered himself one of those people, as both victim and perpetrator. She could see that he carried a survivor's guilt that drove him, haunted him.

Still, Michonne realized at the same time, it was all a farce. Just like the fictional movie characters he cited as models, it was a story. One he'd woven to justify himself. A tale that, though quite probably true, was also just a fable that had earned him legendary status. A yarn he spun to convince people to follow him like a demented pied piper, that tricked them into living, quite literally, on scraps from his table. Stories he told convinced people to commit heinous acts of violence in the name of righting years-gone-by wrongs by basically just compounding them.

Michonne grew even more apprehensive as it dawned on her that he counted the United Nations, _her organization_ , among those groups that had wronged him and his followers.

"And what of your mother-in-law? Does she agree with what you've decided to do in her and her daughter's name?"

"Why don't you ask her?" Ngangabouka asked with a sly smile as if she'd walked into a trap he'd intentionally set for her, turning the question back on her harshly. "Mama, our guest wants to know what your daughter would have thought of what I do?"

Michonne nearly choked on the tiny bit of water she'd just brought to her lips from a small cup.

"My Lucille doesn't get to have an opinion. _She's dead_." Oné said darkly in her smokily-accented English, as similarly devoid of emotion as his was. "But my son keeps her grave watered with the blood of our enemies and _that_ I don't mind."


	34. Chapter 34

_*_ **Author's Note ***

Hey Guys, quick point of clarification: Negan didn't marry his mother-in-law. He's bad, but he ain't quite that bad. _Michonne_ thought Onè was a wife because she's just trying to get the lay of the land and Ngangabouka and his many wives were well-known to her before she even got there. She just assumed because she didn't know he had a stray mother-in-law out there (except for the one Dwight killed, of course. RIP Ariane's Mom). She made that assumption but then at the dinner she discovers Onè isn't his first wife but the _mom_ of his first wife. And nobody bothered to tell her because they're all a bunch of assholes, LOL! Still, if Onè's not a disgruntled wife then why is she helping Michonne?

 _7/27/15 09:55 CAT_

Medical Station Omicron, Rwanda

Negan continued to whistle amiably as Rick watched standing side by side in the elevator. The others had just left and Rick's mind still worked overtime trying to figure out how they could turn around and leave again. He felt as if he was moving from bad decision to bad, or quite possibly, _worse_ decision in record time.

"No hard feelings over Shane, I hope?" He said to Rick suddenly.

"Excuse me, what?" Despite the fact that he was a topic on Rick's mind more often that he ever cared to admit, it still was difficult to hear his former friend's name out loud. It was even more so when spoken by this man who had been so intimately wrapped up in the circumstances surrounding his death. It made it all fresh again.

"I _said_ ," Negan stopped and chuckled, changing the tack of his conversation. "You know what? Never mind. You're the one who killed him anyway. I don't know why I was even asking."

He went back to whistling, leaving Rick to stew in the turmoil Shane's name forever brought him.

"You know, you're lucky. You've caught me in a transitional moment," Negan started up again a minute later. "Even a few days ago I would have gouged your eyes out with a soup spoon for looking at me the way you are just now."

"The way I am now?" Rick said reluctantly, not really wanting to engage the man in any further conversation. He turned his eyes back toward the columns of buttons on the panel beside the door.

"Like I shit in your cornflakes." He answered. "But it's okay. I'm a pragmatist. And in the world such as it is, a man like you, Captain, is an extremely valuable asset. I know it and I can use a man like you working for me."

Rick looked up at him sharply then. "Work for you? What makes you think I would ever work for you?"

"Well, Michonne, of course," Negan said it as if it were obvious. "And that other chick, Sasha, was it? Yeah, hopefully, Michonne's somewhere downstairs getting prepped for surgery as we speak."

Rick set his jaw but didn't say anything in response.

"Oh don't be coy, Captain. I have your number….truth told, I've actually had it for years," Negan smiled regardless. "Shane told me about you two dog-years ago."

Rick refused to give Negan anything to gnaw on, keeping his face as blank as possible.

"Believe it or not, it was never, ever my intention to hurt Michonne. I've always liked her."

Rick scoffed reflexively and then frowned, upset with himself for giving anything away.

"No, really." Negan smiled ingratiatingly. "Shane would complain about her _constantly_ and all I kept thinking was 'Boy, she sounds like my kinda chick.' Then my little bird told me how much you meant to each other and I knew I had to meet her. Naturally, I discovered I was right, she's a hoot and a half. And then it just clicked, I knew then like I know now, that if I had her I had you. I didn't even need to hurt her to get you to fall in line. Isn't that true?"

Rick's silence unfortunately spoke for him.

"And obviously, that's still the deal. Honestly, I can't believe you guys came right back to me. Is that fate or what? Not even one without the other — no, both you _and Michonne_ — like a little boxed set. WITH EXTRAS for hours of entertainment _._ " Negan laughed and held up a hand like he was trying to forestall Rick's possible offense or objection. "But, I mean, I still won't hurt her. 'Cuz I don't have to, am I right? Not unless you make me."

Rick looked back at the door praying for it to open and let him out before he lunged across the space and ripped Negan's tongue right out of his mouth. He knew the man was serious. He would hurt Michonne in response to any perceived intractability on Rick's part. He would use Michonne as leverage to make Rick do whatever he wanted. He knew that like he knew his name, which meant Negan was absolutely right...as long as he had Michonne, he had Rick.

"All that unfortunate business before was actually your buddy Shane's doing." Negan continued on, Rick was certain, because he knew it was getting under Rick's skin. "Yeah, he told me how to get ahold of her because he wanted me to get rid of her and I thought about it. I had a big shipment coming in and with the increased scrutiny—courtesy of Michonne's meddling of course— I needed to make you more pliable. But once I met her, I recognized her value— _alive_. And I knew just having her would have certainly gotten me exactly what I wanted. If Shane hadn't gone and fucked it up."

Rick couldn't help looking back at him for that. This was a new wrinkle in an old story.

"Didn't know that, huh?" Negan laughed. "Yeah, I decided to just bring you to heel and then let her go. Shane was the one that kept insisting that I put a bullet in her head. I thought it was a waste and honestly it defeated my purpose. I even told him so. But he was convinced she was on to our thing and so he took it upon himself to get personally involved. Then, well you know the rest… I didn't appreciate that. Any of it."

The elevator doors opened and he allowed Rick off first.

"See, I'm an idea man, Cap. I believe, in life, there are two types of people. The ones that respond to the carrot and the others that are moved by the stick. Now Shane, the dumb bunny that he was, that's a carrot man. I kept him in enough carrots, in his case, cold, hard cash and he fell right into line. _But you?_ You, silly rabbit, have to always make things difficult. You are _definitely_ a stick guy. And unfortunately for her, Michonne was... _is_ my stick. Now what sense would it have made for me to go burning up my stick?" Negan tsked, shaking his head. "But Shane just didn't get it. He didn't know it yet but his days on my team were numbered. He was not an idea man. You guys just happened to beat me to it."

In his heart, Rick knew he shouldn't feel relief knowing that. He knew it was his penance to feel like Shane's blood would forever stain his hands. But he didn't. Knowing that Negan had planned to put Shane out to pasture, after all they both had planned for him and Michonne, felt like an immense weight off Rick's shoulders. In small moments, particularly when he'd gone home to Georgia, Rick had grieved his friend —the man he used to know— the good man he had grown up with. But knowing what he now knew, even that small bit of guilt was gone. Shane Walsh had leveraged the entirety of their thirty-plus year friendship for a few extra zeros in his bank account. With that knowledge, as far as Rick was concerned, the man could finally, at long last, burn in hell.

"I helped you just now, didn't I?" Negan said cannily. "I don't know how I know it but I did."

Unexpectedly, he slapped Rick hard on the back, like an old friend and laughed heartily.

"Here's the thing, Captain. This is the 'secret', if you will. And I won't even charge you for it. Like I said, in my life I've found that everybody's moved by something. Carrot, stick, whatever you choose to call it. But I decided long ago that I'm _gonna_ have my way regardless. It's just a matter of how. All that to say, why don't you and I figure out how to accomplish that end result now with minimal bloodshed and with your dignity still intact, shall we?" He spoke happily as he led Rick down the bright white and silver corridor. "Now, come on. We have a lot to talk about. And I think you will be surprised by how much."

 _19:18 CAT_

"Michonne, when I saw you all on the cameras coming up in the lift, I just knew I had to come greet you." Ariane said warmly.

Michonne was speechless as Carol pushed her off the elevator. It was a rare thing for her. When she was silent, it was usually entirely her choice, a deliberate act of withholding she frequently used to exert her will. But this was something different; it was the stuff of nightmares.

Although Shane and Ngangabouka had occasionally returned to terrorize her in her dreams, four long years of therapy had made that increasingly an unpleasant part of her , however, existed in her memory purely like the personification of a catalyst, and in that way not a real person in Michonne's dreams but more of an adjunct to all their collective misfortune...her's, Maggie's, Rick's, even in some ways to Shane's. In other words, an element that could not be controlled or likewise accused of deliberately affecting things but still altered them irrevocably nonetheless. This girl, a woman now, existed in another realm altogether in Michonne's recollections, more like an apparition. Ariane had turned, in Michonne's mind, into a spectre that pushed things in particular directions…or not. To this day, Michonne was still unclear about it all. What she was clear about was that this girl made her nervous.

Unsurprisingly, for that reason, in the years since the time that she and Rick had only barely escaped from Ngangabouka's compound with their lives, Michonne had only actually thought of the girl herself a handful of times. She never wondered or truly even cared what had become of her. It was not malicious. Ariane had simply become so inseparable from the rest of what happened that Michonne sometimes couldn't believe that she had been real at all. And when she vowed to put it all out of her mind, Ariane had just gone along with all the rest of it. A place in her mind she had tried to sequester, board up and condemn.

So, what did one now say to the ghost that lingered only at the periphery of their dreams? Michonne had no idea as Ariane stood in front of her.

The woman Ariane had become smiled pleasantly at Michonne, bending at the waist to be closer to eye-level with her. "I've so prayed we would meet again."

Michonne could tell there was sincerity in that statement, though she was unsure whether the sentiment boded well for her or not.

" _Come_." She instructed and Denise moved obediently with Carol and Michonne pulling up the rear.

Ariane guided them down another pristine white corridor, through the same gauntlet of passkey-required, sealed doorways. This hall was unsettlingly indistinguishable from the one they'd exited on the floors below them. The only thing different was that instead of room after room of empty hospital beds, these rooms contained desks and chairs, generic artwork and false windows to what had to be a nonexistent view so far underground. The frosted glass walls, in this case, obscured offices not patient-care rooms. Michonne noted the building seemed to be capable of facilitating a work staff far larger than the skeleton crew that ran it, even when the dead bodies outside were taken into account.

Ariane led them to a side office off the main corridor. It was of a mid-size and clearly had been one of the ones previously in use evidenced by papers strewn across the desk, a well-loved couch and a whiteboard covered in what might as well be hieroglyphic formulas incomprehensible to Michonne's eyes.

As they entered, she watched Ariane closely. She'd filled out nicely, blossoming into a lovely woman with a fuller, rounder face and body than she'd had in her youth. Her dark brown eyes, that had once seemed so haunted, now betrayed a keen intelligence, a scrutinizing gaze and a wealth of secrets. All were things Michonne had glimpsed in her as a teen, that were now on full-display in adulthood.

Once they were all inside, Ariane closed the door behind them, then turned and came close enough to put a brief warm hand to Michonne shoulder before looking at Denise. "Dr. Cloyd, Miss Michonne just got out of surgery. What is she doing out of bed?"

"I advised rest, but she wanted to see Captain Grimes. She refused to stay in her room." Denise reported quickly. Her voice shook despite the fact that Ariane spoke to her softly.

Ariane's smile grew as if pleased by the fear she inspired. She looked down on Michonne and for the first time, Michonne felt trapped in the chair and vulnerable. As if she also felt the sudden predatory nature of Ariane's gaze, Carol leaned in to the handles of the wheelchair readying as if to reverse course and wheel her out quickly, if necessary.

"You haven't changed, I see," Ariane said to Michonne stepping even closer, then toward the side until their knees could almost touch. She spoke as she moved and Michonne leaned away from her wearily without even realizing she was doing it. "Of course, I should have realized. Well, we have remedies for that, don't we?"

She reached down, moving smoothly between the back of the chair and Carol, who stepped back reflexively, and then Ariane flipped the break on Michonne's wheelchair.

" _And there_ , Dr. Cloyd. See?" She turned to Denise as if she'd just completed a magic trick and sought applause. "Just that easy. Now Miss Michonne won't be going anywhere until _I say_."

Michonne heard Carol begin to speak, but cut her off before she could finish. There was something in Ariane's honey-sweet voice that somehow advised caution to her ears. There was a reason why the girl was still with Ngangabouka, a reason why she'd survived the last few days when so many had not. She suddenly inspired trepidation in Michonne and she decided right then to let her cautious foreboding about Ariane win out.

"I just want to see Rick." Michonne chose to echo Denise's tone of deference. "Can you tell me where he is?"

"He is speaking with Dada. They are setting terms."

"There's that word again, 'terms'? _Terms_ for what?" Michonne asked frustrated by the vagueness with which everyone was speaking to her.

Her side ached painfully as she looked back at Carol, whose expression confirmed Ariane's words in its grimness.

"Staying here under our protection is not without cost, Michonne." Ariane said moving away from them to a nearby desk chair. Her voice changed then, becoming more serious, less genial. "You must know that."

She moved gracefully, Michonne noted, reminiscent of Mama Oné. Michonne only noticed then that Ariane was dressed very much like the older woman had, once upon a time as well, with her head wrapped in a colorful head scarf that matched her skirts and a simple tucked oxford shirt. It made her bearing very regal. Clearly, from Denise's behavior, it worked to inspire the same obeisance the older woman once had. Interestingly though, she wore a white lab coat over it all, much like Dr. Denise, although Ariane's fit better than the young doctor's did indicating it likely belonged to her. There hadn't been enough years since she'd last seen the girl to account for medical school, so that was curious.

"What cost?" Michonne asked harshly, pulled back into the present moment from her recollection of the older woman. "We're not staying here with you."

Michonne had known intellectually that there was no way that Ngangabouka would have agreed to save her life without exacting a price. Still, the idea that he and Rick were off somewhere hammering out the details of what that would be without her did not sit well. In a reversal, Carol's hand fell onto her shoulder heavily, advising further caution without words.

"We're grateful of course, but I don't see what we have that we could give you." Michonne added carefully, but also truthfully.

Other than a few of the extra guns they had on board and some of the medical supplies—that would most likely be completely superfluous in this well-stocked facility— Michonne couldn't imagine what else they could have to give. As she thought of that, it dawned on her what a precarious position Rick had been in when they arrived. It pained her yet again that she hadn't been in a position to help him, to help any of their people. To have arrived on Ngangabouka's doorstep with not one, but _two_ injured people, gravely in need of assistance only he could provide would have placed Rick solidly over a barrel from the outset. It was an exceedingly poor bargaining position. Michonne was angry with herself for being foolish enough to get hurt, for being the weak link.

Ariane rested her elbow on the armrest of her chair and propped her chin up in her palm, looking over Michonne and Carol smugly. Then she smiled cloyingly as she replied, "I'm sure they were able to work something out. Dada can always find ways to put a man to good use."

 _It was time to take another tack._

"Yes," Michonne acknowledged. And that was _precisely_ what she was afraid of.


	35. Chapter 35

*** Author's Note***

My apologies for the tardiness. School is in full swing and sometimes I'm already asleep at the time I usually post. My bad.

Anyhoo, do not ask me why because I couldn't tell you (especially since nothing much really happens) but this was one of my most favorite chapters to write. I worked really hard on it. _Enjoy!_

May 7th 2011

Kisangani, DRC

Rick walked into his office unshowered and unshaven. His appearance giving a small clue to his inner turmoil. He had brooded on his balcony that early morning until he became convinced that in order track down Michonne, he had to first track down the traitor she had unwittingly exposed. He remained convinced that the two events followed in too close a succession to be unrelated. Now, in order to do that he was going to have to get access to information at USAfriCOM. And to do that, he needed to contact _Carter_ —the very idea of which he found nettlesome.

US Army Colonel Carter Embry was far from Rick's best contact or friend at USAfriCOM. In fact, he could barely call him a "friend" at all. He was far closer to a tolerated colleague than anything. The man just rubbed Rick wrong. He had always thought the guy was a pretentious, arrogant, know-it-all prick. But a recent promotion, on par with Rick's, had made him both more unbearable and worse yet, unavoidable. It also didn't help —honestly, it had always annoyed Rick— that once upon a time back when they were all coincidentally posted in Northern Africa, Michonne and Carter had briefly dated.

Three dates, to be perfectly exact. "Three _magical_ dates," was how Shane had taken to teasing both Rick and Michonne about it. Still, it had been because Carter was such a straight shooter that Michonne liked him, even after all these years. "Decent in the extreme and honest to a fault," was how she'd always described him. As a result, they had remained friends despite whatever happened between them... and Rick's general irritation. Michonne believed in him and that was precisely why he was Rick's best bet now. If the organization was rife with corruption, Carter, with the giant stick permanently stuck up his ass, was the only person Rick could be confident wasn't involved. In this case, that meant the only man over at AfriCOM he could trust.

Rick grabbed the literally old school, dusty Rolodex he'd inherited from his predecessor off the corner of his desk and dialed Carter's number from the little white file card.

"Embry," An authoritative voice answered after the very first ring.

"You still answering your own phone, Carter?" Rick asked affably.

"My girl's out on a coffee run, but I think I still remember how the buttons work."

Rick rolled his eyes.

 _Sometimes, the guy was straight out of the fifties, a complete throwback_. How Michonne could have tolerated that for even three dates was still a mystery to Rick years later.

"So, what can I do you for, Captain?"

He was hardly surprised Embry knew exactly who it was. Though there was little love lost between the two men, their complimentary job descriptions in closely associated organizations meant that they were always circling each other. Much to their mutual displeasure, they had to work together often. It had quickly become clear that Carter thought Rick had lucked into his position without the qualifications and Rick thought Carter was a pompous, overly-officious, over-educated jerk. To get the job done, however, they had both decided independently to ignore these very basic facts. So with little need for further preamble, Rick got straight to the point.

"I need to know where you guys are in the CID investigation."

Carter actually laughed right into Rick's ear.

"Grimes, I'm not sure I know what you're talking about. And the truth is, even if I knew, I wouldn't tell you. You know the Criminal Investigation Command doesn't answer to me."

 _What Rick knew was he didn't have time for this coy nonsense._

"Believe me, the last thing I want to do is ask _you_ for a favor, but right now, I need one."

Carter was silent for a long moment, offering nothing, neither encouraging nor outright rebuffing him. Rick found that curious. He was obviously intrigued by Rick's words but unwilling to say anything.

Rick sighed audibly and tried again. "Carter, let me buy you a cup of coffee and we can talk about it."

"I just said my assistant was bringing me some, why the hell would I leave my office to get a cup with you?"

"To possibly help our mutual friend."

At that, Rick heard a sound like a door closing on the other end of the line. "(85) 57-482-643."

Rick fumbled with the penholder on his desk clumsily trying to get the number down before he forgot it.

"Ten minutes," Carter said quietly before a click abruptly ended the call.

* * *

When Rick called the number he was given eight minutes later, Carter directed him to a hole-in-the-wall bar on the other side of town, in the quieter Lubunga commune. Located on a roadside in the largely residential neighborhood, it was a fairly typical building style for the region. Made up of little more than one room surrounded by four wooden walls, it was covered in advertisements for the local football club and popular beer brands. It was a dark space illuminated with old Christmas lights along a galvanized steel roof that trapped the heat, four small windows and two big ceiling fans merely moved the hot air around. The design made it sweltering inside— all the better for ensuring thirsty patrons. The colonel was already inside sitting on one of the three wooden bar stools when Rick arrived. He nodded simply as Rick stepped up off the street and into the wooden hut to join him.

"Carter."

"Captain Grimes." They nodded at each other as the man behind the bar looked with passing curiosity at the not one, but two white men suddenly at his bar, before placing an icy, long neck bottle in front of Carter.

To Rick's recollection, Embry was a rather obnoxious teetotaler who, as if such a thing was usually even possible, irritated Shane more than he did Rick. He raised his eyebrows at Carter in surprise. To which, Carter just chuckled.

"Non-alcoholic. They make a homemade ginger beer here that's excellent. You should try it."

"So, what's with all the cloak and dagger?" Rick asked as he pulled up a chair beside the man.

Carter sat up stiffly on his stool and smoothed out invisible wrinkles in his uniform dress pants before speaking. Rick had to refrain from rolling his eyes yet again.

"You guys are radioactive right now. You do know that? I practically need iodine tablets to be seen with you."

" _Us_?" Rick started in surprise, before pausing.

He took a beat and tried to take in the observation in the spirit it was given— as an accurate accounting of the state of affairs not as a personal insult— but he was coming up aggravatingly short. He suddenly had a new appreciation for what Michonne had had to endure these past few months as a social pariah. Rick breathed deeply through his nose as he asked the barkeep for a cup of coffee and glass of ice, then pulled off his sunglasses. He tucked them in his shirt and looked at Carter expectantly.

"I know I'm the one that asked you here, but I assumed you'd have something to tell me when you accepted."

"Well, I'm certainly not here to gaze into your baby blues," Carter said staring back with his own stern, blue-eyed visage. "Just tell me first, is it true?"

"Is _what_ true?" Rick asked already running out of patience with his stalling.

"Is Michonne missing?" Carter said his usual mask of mild indifference slipping.

"What?"

"If you need my help, don't play games, Rick. Is it true?"

Rick sat in stunned silence for a moment.

He wasn't sure what was more surprising, Carter's genuine tone of concern or the fact that for the first time in the many years that they'd known each other he had used Rick's first name. He hesitated another moment before nodding. A part of him, his pride —Rick could admit it if he was honest— didn't want to acknowledge that Michonne had disappeared on his watch. Given how important she was to him personally, and to the ESHQ professionally-speaking, that admission to a colleague of Carter's stature cost Rick's ego more dearly than speaking the same words to a civilian would have. More importantly though, Rick was confused by how quickly word had spread.

Carter looked pained as Rick admitted it. His genuine distress somehow made Rick feel worse.

"How'd you hear?" He asked.

The vaguely smug look Carter usually sported reappeared for just a moment before it was replaced with something else, nervousness. "I, I just like to know that she's doing okay. It's nothing weird. I call her, we talk occasionally. I ask after her sometimes. And I've taken her to dinner once or twice since she's been in town. With Francine…'cuz we're dating, Francine and I, I mean." Carter tripped over his words.

 _Francine._ Rick had heard that rumor. But hadn't, before now, understood the attraction between the two. _That was pretty gross_ , Rick thought seeing through Carter's bullshit explanation. He wondered then if Francine even realized Carter used dating her as a means to keep tabs on Michonne?

Rick looked at Carter afresh. Objectively, if he took the arrogant, now vaguely stalker-y, assholishness out of the equation, Rick could see what Michonne and other women saw in him. Carter was a solidly built man, with a boyishly oval face, a ruddy tan, blonde hair and bright cerulean blue eyes. If the scourge of male pattern baldness hadn't caught up with him a few years ago, he probably would have still looked like the exact same handsome guy he had been at twenty-five. Despite it though, he maintained a fair share of admirers in both Rick's camp and his own. He was a catch for most. So the fact that he was still, after all these years, carrying a torch for Michonne was a bit of a strange and unpleasant surprise to Rick.

"Francine called me when Maggie told her," Carter admitted readily. " _Asking for my help_."

Though Rick was certain it was the jackass in him that made Carter add that last part, he ignored it. The truth of it was Rick _did_ need the help, whether or not it was humbling to admit it.

"Are the forty-eight up yet?"

Rick's mouth became a thin line as Carter referred to the anecdotal "first forty-eight hours" after which, the likelihood of finding a person alive supposedly declined rapidly. He shook his head. According to the last time Maggie had seen her, Michonne still had approximately 15 hours left. As Rick watched Carter brace himself with relief, the Colonel's true feelings for their mutual friend became clear. It also explained Carter's rather uncharacteristic one-eighty on the phone with him earlier. It was clear now, he would help Rick if he could.

"What can you tell me, Embry. No bullshit," Rick said coming back to the point.

Carter looked up at him abruptly, losing the thousand-yard stare he'd had. "Frankly Grimes, there's not much to tell. If this is really happening, the perpetrators are covering their tracks meticulously. I'm told, on our end, all our 'i's are dotted and our 't's crossed. All the shipments of our surplus have been accounted for to reputable dealers who have been vetted or with whom we have longstanding relationships."

Rick eyed him skeptically. He'd been in this business a long time. Nothing that involved a bureaucracy as unwieldy and byzantine as the US government's was as transparent and unblemished as the thing Carter had just described. Anyone who bought that was either an idiot or a fool.

Carter was neither.

"I'm telling you what I've been told, what I've been told to report if anyone asks, not what I believe." Carter continued answering Rick's unasked question. "Something is definitely up. We just don't know what. The whistleblower's story was far too specific and jibes too closely with the content of stock we've recently shipped to dealers and have in the warehouses..."

Rick noted how deliberately vague Carter was being. _He didn't realize Michonne was the whistleblower._

So either he was truly on the outside of the investigation as he said or Stavros had kept his promise and kept her name well away from the Americans. But then the thought of that unnerved Rick. If that was the case, whoever it was that took her was so well embedded within AfriCOM that he knew something even Carter didn't.

"Carter, I'm gonna stop you," Rick said interrupting his colleague's data-dump. The Colonel stopped, even his drink pausing mid-way between the bar and his mouth. "It was Michonne."

Carter looked at him blankly.

"The whistleblower? It was Michonne. She had a run-in with a gang of Pop Negan's men about 150 klicks from the Ugandan border and they were armed to the teeth with US Military-grade hardware." Rick explained as plainly as he could.

Carter looked stricken. " _That_ was her?"

Rick nodded yet again.

"I know she'd been in the midst of that debacle out of bounds, but...that was _her_ too?" He couldn't reconcile it. Rick could see it on Carter's face.

It was odd seeing what that looked like from the outside looking in. The strange sense of betrayal, mixed with the relief of knowing she had gotten back unscathed, shaded by a certain amount of that " _attagirl"_ -pride that as always, Michonne was a seemingly indefatigable force of nature. It was all writ large across the man's face.

"What the hell was she _thinking_? Better yet, how _the fuck_ did she get away?" Carter asked.

Rick shrugged. "You know Michonne, she could convince you to buy beachfront property in the Sahara."

Rick had thought about it often since then. Even after Michonne reported the details of the event to Stavros and Matt, a meeting he had been privy to, the details of it all defied logic. She'd talked her way out of the hands of a tyrant. _Who did that?_ He still prayed that somehow a similar resolution was possible here, though he doubted it.

"And you think this is all somehow related?" Carter asked.

Rick nodded again. Carter sat back in his seat, stumped.

"Have you been following the money?" Rick pressed him.

Carter skewered him with a harsh look. "The money is a dead end. I told you everything is above board."

"Well _Colonel_ , something is falling off the back of those trucks at some point. I need to know what point that is, even if you have to send someone into every warehouse you've ever done business with and count the stock by hand!"

"Listen, Rick," Carter's eyes narrowed as he straightened his tie and sat up again in his seat as if he was preparing to square off. "We've been looking over our logs and parsing through the stock in our warehouses with a fine-tooth comb for months now. But we are not the only game in town."

"Are you talking about us?" Rick said incredulously. "I thought this was just AfriCOM doing their due diligence? You guys are seriously suggesting that we are the culprits? You just finished saying that Michonne's information matched your stock. She's the one that sounded the alarm. Why the hell are you _still_ looking at us?"

Carter took a deep breath before speaking.

"First of all, _I'm_ not doing anything. CID swooped in as soon as Michonne, as you called it, 'sounded the alarm' and took any power I might have had to investigate right out of my hands. Second, they're looking at _you_ because we sell to you as well. In fact of the stock listed, you are one of only three clients that received all those goods."

"But the United Nations isn't in the arms business." Rick retorted.

Carter gave that smug little smirk that always managed to drive Rick crazy. "But just like everyone else, you _are_ in the 'surplus' business. And you boys are one of the American government's best customers, Captain."

He knew this, Rick didn't understand why he was suddenly surprised. Still, sitting at the dark bar nursing a watery iced coffee, he felt as if Carter, like Michonne before him, had turned on a very bright light. And Rick knew what always happened when the lights went on— all the creatures scattered for cover.


	36. Chapter 36

*** Author's Note***

Hiya!

Only because a few of you were wondering about it. Carter is _totally_ the guy from the show! As a general rule, if I use the name of a character from the show that we've seen (and ever had lines) then that's the face-claim for the character. Hopefully, if I do a decent job with characterization, they at least "resemble" the person too. With some people, like our not-so beloved Carter, I had to extrapolate from the little bit we were given during the show to fill him out. But the fact that you're all like, "What did Michonne ever see in this guy?" means that you identified with Rick there. Which is exactly what I wanted. He's the inexplicable ex in every person's mate's history that makes you say, "You dated _him/her_?" In Michonne's defense though, it was only three " _magical_ " dates, LOL!

Continued love to each and every one of you for following along! XOXO

* * *

 _7/27/15 19:37 CAT_

Medical Station Omicron, Rwanda

Michonne took a deep breath watching the young woman carefully.

 _Okay, go._ She thought steeling herself.

"How long have they been gone? Is there a timeframe on this tête-à-tête? Do you know when it will be over? Do you know where the rest of my group is? Is there anything that you can _actually_ tell me?" Michonne asked in rapid succession with clear irritation. She was aware that it was the pain of her wound and the sutures that helped put just the right sharp edge on her annoyance. She took a deep breath—at least as deep as she could bear. "If, for whatever reason, I've been excluded from this negotiation, I'd like to, at the very least, see my people."

Ariane's eyes narrowed briefly before the saccharine smile returned to her face. It had clearly been a while since anyone had spoken to her in that manner. "Surely Michonne, you don't think we're keeping them from you? You were in surgery and then recovery. We couldn't very well have them all leaning over you in the operating theater."

There was an irritation in the woman's explanation that she was only marginally better at hiding than Michonne had been.

"Well, I'm up now and I don't require a babysitter, if that's what you are supposed to be."

Ariane rose slowly with a nod, "Very well, this way." She put out an arm to guide the women back toward the door.

As Carol bent forward to release the wheel lock, she surreptitiously whispered in Michonne's ear. "Easy, girl."

She nodded very slightly to acknowledge that she'd heard Carol but her stern visage said without equivocation that she would not be taking that advice.

Michonne understood the reasoning behind the admonition but what Carol didn't grasp was that she and Denise had been right all along. Michonne _did_ know these people. And she knew this was all they responded to, all they respected. She knew that if she didn't do this, in this way now, Ngangabouka's people would walk all over her and everyone in their group for the duration of their 'stay'. And even though Rick hardly needed to be told to assert himself ever, she worried that he might err on the side of caution to assure her safety. _She_ had to be the one to play this role. It was a role reversal, her as the hellion, he as the peacemaker but it could work if they got on the same page.

Assuming of course, that he didn't have Ngangabouka's number the moment they met, assuming he did not completely understand that aggression was the only language Ngangabouka spoke. But that was a big if at this point. Particularly since it had taken even Michonne a minute before she pulled herself out of the odd Twilight Zone episode feeling this whole experience was giving her. But once Michonne recognized through Ariane's behavior that the girl had changed, bloomed under Ngangabouka's particular type of sunlight, she quickly figured out what she had to do. _She needed to play rough._

Ariane led them silently through the corridors. Michonne made a note of all the turns as yet another wave of nauseating deja vu hit her. Visions of her previous captivity came back to her, the desperate grasping for orientation, the unsettling feeling of constant uncertainty, the general oddness of this turn of events, it was all almost overwhelmingly familiar. When they passed a small conference room with a few of Ngangbouka's men casually lounging and talking amongst themselves Michonne's stomach nearly flipped. It was the prison at the Outpost all over again.

"Don't you all have something you could be doing?" Ariane said then startling the men, who turned out to be boys, not much past sixteen to Michonne's guess. They bumbled around not unlike Keystone Kops for a moment before coming to the threshold of the door to present themselves. Ariane kept walking however not even looking back to be sure she'd been obeyed.

"Michonne, are you alright?" Denise asked softly of Michonne reaching down for her wrist as they walked on. "Your heart rate is a little elevated. I really think you should consider going back to your room."

Ariane swiped through another doorway and holding it open, turned to look at them. "I can always tell them to pay you a visit once they've adjourned?"

Michonne gritted her teeth, she was beginning to feel the drag on her. She did need to rest, her entire body ached though it was really only her side that was injured. It wouldn't be long before she hit the wall, but she could not allow that to happen before she spoke with Rick. Not before she saw her people. It was funny how the small, scrappy group had so quickly become that to her. _Hers_ , her people. Even Sasha, Rosita and Jesus, who she'd only just met when she'd regained consciousness, they were all her people now. And she had to know they were okay, had to see it with her own eyes before she could rest. No one moreso than Rick, however.

"That won't be necessary," Michonne insisted. "Dr. Denise is concerned needlessly."

She watched Ariane eye her carefully, as one might inspect something for flaws or imperfections, before following them through the doorway.

Unlike the entries to previous corridors, this door required a swipe and a key code punched into a pad before they went through the other side stood in stark contrast to the rest of the facility she had seen. Warm light peach walls, wainscoting, and a tawny brown carpet were the first differences, ornate sconces that threw a soft white light put Michonne immediately in mind of the hallways in some of the nicer hotels she'd ever stayed at. They passed an armed guard standing at the door silently.

"These are the temporary living quarters," Denise explained. "For staff."

Michonne nodded. It made sense. A group of international scientists living openly in a small rural village in the southwest of the country would undoubtedly draw unnecessary attention. They would have had to be lodged somewhere within the facility during the times they were here working in order to assure the secrecy of the project.

"Where do you guys _actually_ live?" She asked Denise.

"Well, I share, um, shared an apartment in Nairobi with my girlfriend," Dr. Cloyd explained struggling to clear a sudden thickness in her throat. "Because she's Kenyan. But most of the medical staff lived in Brazzaville. We did have some locals though." There was something in Denise's face when she said that that Michonne didn't understand.

Surprisingly, Carol reached out and placed a comforting hand on Denise's arm.

"Some came all the way from the States and stayed here for three or four months at a time." She walked on wiping stray tears from the bottom rim of her eyeglasses before taking them off completely to clean on her coat. "I couldn't do it. I stayed for the requisite six-week stints before heading home…. This was my week four. You really think it's all gone?"

Michonne noticed that though she had her back to them, leading the other women through a well-appointed communal living area containing multiple televisions, lounge chairs, and a large pool table, Ariane was still following their conversation. Her head turned ever so slightly as Denise waited for their response.

"Denise, I don't know exactly but from my security briefing, I know Johannesburg and Lagos are gone. It seems the larger cities of the world were hit hardest." Michonne answered grimly.

"New York, Paris, London...all gone," Carol confirmed.

"I supposed I should be grateful that I was here then when this happened but all I keep thinking about is Dalila at home, all alone. She must have been so frightened. My girlfriend, see she's an artist, a sculptor, she wouldn't know what to do…" Denise trailed off.

"So you have no contact with the outside world once you're in the facility?" Michonne asked abruptly, wanting to gain a better understanding of how the place worked.

She didn't want to seem callous, on the contrary, she understood completely. Her own grief about it all still overtook her in waves. In fact, she'd discovered that the thought of all the people and places that were no doubt gone was almost too painful to contemplate. So for the most part, Michonne had chosen to put it all out of her mind. She focused instead on the task in front of her. Still, witnessing Denise's fresh grief brought it all back. She cleared her throat and blinked back the water in her own eyes, intent on moving on before the emotion of it overwhelmed her.

"Usually, we can call out, email, we had TVs as you can see. We were isolated but not cloistered. We used to joke that it was like being posted to Antarctica but with marginally better weather." Denise struggled to bring back a measure of levity to her voice, although even Michonne couldn't understand why. The desperation of their current situation, Michonne was certain, would have made her morose if she didn't have anything else to occupy her mind. If she wasn't already working on their exit strategy.

"Dr. Denise, stop speaking now," Ariane instructed firmly. "We'll let DaDa tell them what he wants them to know."

She stopped at the door that led out of the large "recreation" room and peered through the small window in the door. Then she placed a hand on one hip and turned to face them.

"Your friends should be in here. I don't know where they could have gotten to." Ariane pushed the door open and spoke in Swahili to a man waiting just out of sight on the other side. While the door was open, Michonne looked through and down the plush corridor lined with doors.

"What?" She asked under her breath to Denise gesturing with her head in that direction while Ariane was distracted.

"Bedrooms, more like suites," Denise replied quickly and quietly.

Michonne looked back at Carol, who shrugged. Clearly, Michonne's guess was as good as hers. Apparently, it was her first time on this side of the facility too. Carol looked around at the facilities with interest.

Ariane turned back to them then, "Apparently they're all in the kitchen. Come, it's this way."

They followed her through another doorway. _The place was a maze_ , Michonne noted with a mixture of dismay and annoyance.

They could all hear the talking and spurts of laughter before they actually got to the double swinging doors of the kitchen. They had just walked through a mid-sized dining room that both Michonne and Carol marveled at. With its soft lighting, frosted gold sconces, round elegant dining tables and linen-skirted buffet tables lining the walls, it wasn't a cafeteria as much as it was a private dining room. Empty chafing dishes and serving ware sat waiting for the next mealtime like they were in an exclusive executive club.

Denise and Ariane pushed through the double doors into what was a modestly-sized industrial kitchen with bright stainless steel countertops and cabinetry. Immediately, they saw Rosita relaxed on top of a long counter, with a large bag of potato chips sitting between her legs. Glenn stood nearby helping himself to the contents while Jesus stood opposite them clearly regaling them with a story. Daryl sat on another countertop perpendicular to them all, silently feeding slices of apple into his mouth with a paring knife. Two people, that Michonne assumed were from the facility's group given their scrubs, leaned against adjacent counters a row behind listening.

"...As the mom begins to smile, the kid adds, 'And for those of you who are pissed off about the TWO HOUR delay, please see the bitch in the kitchen!'" Jesus finished to the amusement of the small group. Everyone laughed. Even a corner of Daryl's mouth hitched up briefly although his head stayed down, with eyes intent on his apple.

The laughter died quickly when they noticed Ariane enter. However, Rosita and Glenn perked up again upon seeing Michonne in her chair roll in behind the woman.

"There she is!" Jesus intoned enthusiastically, even whooping and clapping as if Michonne had accomplished some unknown feat. Soon, everyone was at it, even the USAMRIID staff she was unfamiliar with. Daryl put his thumb and forefinger in his mouth and let loose with a whistle that added to the commotion and resounded in the room.

Michonne was thoroughly confused by this reception. Besides the fact that it was excessive in its fervor, given she hadn't done anything but not die, it was incongruous with their circumstances. _In fact, the whole scene was._ It was as if they were guests instead of prisoners.

"Ms. Philippe, I mean, Michonne, we're happy to see you up," Glenn said politely after the applause died down. He spoke with decidedly less cheer given her face.

"Thank you, Pvt. Rhee," Michonne replied warily. Since she woke up everything had seemed out of whack. From Rick's absence at her bedside to Ariane's presence to this reception, she felt like she'd awoken to opposites day. "What's going on? Where's Captain Grimes?"

Jesus spoke up first. "He's upstairs with Negan—"

Michonne cut him off harshly. "If anyone of you says the words 'setting terms', I swear to God..."

Daryl chuckled from his place at the side. A real laugh that surprised nearly everyone in the room. Ariane even seemed to get a kick out of it, putting on her first genuine smile. But after a moment Michonne suspected it was more her own exasperation that delighted the young woman, than anything else. So, she took a moment to gather herself.

"Can anyone tell me what _exactly_ that means?" She asked and then sighed.

Glenn cleared his throat and started. "Well, um, Negan, uh, Mr. Ngangabouka proposed an arrangement with the Captain."

"An arrangement? What does that mean? What sort of arrangement?"

They all exchanged looks she couldn't read.

Rosita spoke up then, "We don't know the specific details yet. Rick said he'd, ahh, _discuss_ the terms with Negan and then come back to tell us. Apparently, they have a scientist here that's been in pretty steady communication with a WHO facility in Scotland somewhere—"

"Near Aberdeen." Glenn supplied.

"From near Aberdeen," Rosita nodded correcting herself. "Since basically the beginning. They think they might be onto something."

"A scientist in Scotland?" Michonne repeated as if she hadn't heard it correctly. _Forty-five hundred miles away?_

She opened her mouth to speak when all of a sudden as if they'd been summoned, Rick and Ngangabouka entered the kitchen with another man through doors on the opposite side. Rick wore a scowl that indicated he'd gladly have those hours of his life back if he could.

Everyone turned in unison, with Daryl turning the most as they were directly behind him. Michonne noted as all attention fell on the two men, that Daryl put the remnants of his apple down yet kept the small paring knife in his hand. With two nimble fingers, he slipped it up his palm until it disappeared near his wrist like a modest parlor trick. Michonne realized then whoever had been foolish enough to give the implement to him in the first place might find that they lived to regret it.

It also indicated that all was not as it seemed. Though the group was seemingly relaxed and sociable, they were likely all still on guard. A brief look exchanged between Rosita and Jesus seemed to indicate the same thing.

Michonne watched as Ngangabouka emerged from around the back cooking station and cabinetry with Rick and the other man following closely behind. He wore the same shit-eating grin he'd had the very last time she'd met him four years earlier as if nothing at all had changed in his world in the intervening time. He clapped his hands together one good time in satisfaction as if sealing a deal. The sound resounded, bouncing off all the stark metal and tile that lined the room. It cut through everything else that was happening in the room too, which is what Michonne suspected it was meant to do. He looked around amused at the scene. Daryl and Rosita slid off their respective countertops and those already standing rose to their full height as if they were about to salute, the casual air of a moment before, entirely lost.

His eyes fell on Michonne almost immediately as he joined the small group and his smile grew. At the same time, she looked to Rick who wore a grave expression. Whatever 'terms' had been set, Rick seemed to be the loser. Michonne figured she had something to do with that.

"Michonne, honey. You. look. like. shit!" Ngangabouka announced animatedly, the smile on his face growing. "But it's a huge improvement over how you looked when Rick here, brought you in."

Rick looked lost in his thoughts when his name was called, suddenly moving his eyes from where they rested on Michonne over to Ngangabouka on his immediate left.

"Well, I'm glad you're feeling well enough to be out of bed." He looked at Ariane, who shrugged very subtly at him in response to the question in his expression. "Dr. Denise, kudos to you for that."

Denise nodded but otherwise didn't speak. Whether out of fear or humility, Michonne was unclear.

"What's the matter? Cat got your tongue? Both of you lost your voices? Denise, you didn't do anything with them during surgery, did you?"

"No." She spoke finally.

"No," Michonne answered then as well.

Ngangabouka just looked at them both expectantly as the entire room waited in silence. Even Rick seemed strangely silent, though Michonne watched as his jaw tensed, knowing it was with effort that he remained that way. It was so oddly similar to the time she'd spent in Ngangabouka's 'court' previously that she suddenly had yet another bout of deja vu.

"Thank you," She uttered finally, huskily, hearing the hoarseness in it from the intubation tube during her surgery...and her own reluctance. Ngangabouka's face eased back into the smile that had begun to wane. "For letting us take refuge with your group...and patching me up."

Michonne gritted her teeth and spoke through the small space in between. A day ago she would have said she'd rather cut off her arm than thank that particular man for anything, ever. _A single day had changed a lot._ Particularly, she noticed, the fact that Rick had continued to stand at his side rather than beat him to death with one of the pots or pans hanging strategically from the ceiling at various stations around the kitchen.

"It was my absolute pleasure, sweetheart. I know you won't believe it but you're still one of my very favorite people in the world," He said his voice filled with condescension, doffing an imaginary cap to her. "Which I imagine doesn't say a whole lot now that there are so few people left in it."

Rick's eyes squinted and his jaw tensed, as he no doubt gnashed his teeth. Which Michonne knew in Rick-speak meant that he was nearly apoplectic with rage.

"Speaking of which," Ngangabouka started as if he were beginning a general pronouncement to them all. "The Captain here and I have come to an agreement..."

Michonne propped her elbow up on the armrest of her chair and balanced her jaw on her fingertips waiting to hear, _finally_ , what exactly that meant.

"We," Rick started, speaking over him before stopping abruptly. Ngangabouka paused, clearly surprised to be interrupted. But then he nodded and Rick continued. "We agreed, that I should be the one to tell them."

"That we did, Captain. My mistake," Ngangabouka said deferentially ceding the floor to him. "Please continue."

He calmly leaned against the counter behind him, near Daryl and let Rick stand at the center of the dozen eyes that followed him. For Michonne, this situation had officially gone from _Twilight Zone_ odd to _Invasion of the Body-Snatchers_ scary.

"There's a WHO facility that's still up and running. They've been exchanging data with this site since the beginning and now they think they might be onto something."

"I thought these guys weren't in contact with any other organizations? Which is it? Are you or aren't you?" Carol asked.

"Well ma'am, you are absolutely correct. The established protocol of our organization prohibits interagency fraternization but as we are now figuratively moving like our avian friends without the benefit of the proverbial aerial safety devices, it has been crucial if not, I'd say imperative, to modify or entirely contravene said governmental directive. Basically, flip the script." The silent man on the other side of Ngangabouka finally spoke.

"Hmm?" Daryl grunted.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Philippe meet Dr. Porter." Ngangabouka rolled his eyes and sighed, his voice deadpan. "Every time this motherfucker opens his mouth, I _literally_ get a headache but he's the smartest person in 1000 kilometers so I can't shoot him in the face...as much as I'd sometimes like to."

Rosita and Jesus both snorted before looking around innocently as if searching for the culprit. Despite the various responses to him, the doctor himself seemed entirely impervious to this criticism, looking at Michonne blankly.

"Hello, Doctor."

"Hello," He replied as she looked over the portly man in the lab coat. Michonne had no idea what to make of him, sporting an absurd mullet that almost distracted her from what he'd been saying.

"You were saying?" She tore her eyes away from the doctor to look at Rick again.

"As I understand it, in layman's terms, a swap is needed."

"A swap? As in an actual physical exchange of materials?" Michonne didn't think she followed what he was saying. "Materials like what?"

"Apparently, they need our, um, specimens and tech for synthesizing more serums and we need some of their research for analysis," He said looking at her cautiously.

 _He was not saying something_.

"And how could we possibly accompl—" Michonne trailed off as understanding came over her.

The entire room was silent. Though purportedly he was reporting this to everyone, it was only her he was speaking to. Even Ngangabouka watched their verbal volley, hanging on every word.

This was the reason for all the vagueness. The reason no one could look her in the eye and explain what the hell was going on. This was what all the negotiation was about.

 _It was about who would be left here as collateral while Rick went across the fucking planet running errands for Ngangabouka._

Her face burned suddenly with frustration and anger. She looked from Rick to Ngangabouka and back like they were in league with each other against her. There was a small part of her that felt almost as if they were. She pondered seriously how much of her very limited physical reserve would be expended if she were to suddenly launch herself out of the wheelchair and tear Ngangabouka's throat out with her teeth.

Impressively, he seemed to read that in her face and startle briefly. "Why, um, why don't we, uh, give these two lovebirds a moment to discuss this? Shall we?"

Ngangabouka held a hand out toward the door encouraging the small group out of the kitchens the way Michonne and her group had entered. They all seemed eager to bolt as if they might have whether or not it had been suggested to them.

"You're okay here, honey?" Carol asked over-solicitously placing a hand on Michonne's shoulder.

She nodded, too afraid to actually speak. At that moment she wanted to breathe fire. Carol seemed to understand, merely giving her a squeeze before walking out.

"I've been dying to play some pool and none of the idiots in here know how. Young man, you look like you could be a pool shark. Do you play?" He placed a heavy hand on Glenn's shoulder as they walked out.

"Um, a bit," Glenn answered flustered as Rosita held the double doors for them.

Ngangabouka turned and spoke over his shoulder as the doors swung closed behind him. "Talk amongst yourselves."

The remnants of his laughter hung between Rick and Michonne as they both turned their attention back from the retreating group to each other. They were only five feet away from one another but for the first time since they'd met, Michonne felt like they might as well already be a continent apart.


	37. Chapter 37

May 8th 2011

Location Unknown, DRC

Michonne was unable to close her eyes, let alone sleep.

She stared out the louvered windows at the sliver of moon in the sky. She was plagued with questions. She wondered at Ngangabouka, at how he could claim, with a straight face that he only planned to keep her for a few days. Given she now knew about Shane's complicity in his operations, she didn't understand how he really believed she would keep this all a secret? He didn't, he couldn't, and yet he promised her safety? Was he toying with her?

She still didn't grasp why he wanted to use her in the first place—although that was clearly what was going on. _What particular value did she have that any other UN employee didn't?_ On Ngangabouka's end, she could be anyone, the resultant response from the UN would be roughly the same. The ransom insurance would pay out the same. But it had been her, especially, that he wanted. Though the reality was she didn't know anything of use about his little operation, she had been identified as a threat by Shane. Why? Unless she knew more than she thought she did. _But what?_

And based on Ariane and Oné's very elaborate and tenuous lie, despite his reassurances, she recognized her days had to be numbered. Meeting the man had reinforced in her a need to get away as quickly as possible. Ngangabouka was a violent man that operated on whim but believed in a so-called "code", which was fine while you were in his good graces. She realized that quickly, watching everyone around him walk on eggshells, trying constantly to curry favor by showing how brutal they could be. During dinner alone, she'd seen three fights break out that the Ngangabouka refused to adjudicate, preferring instead to "just see who won".

To Michonne's eyes, the camp was barely controlled chaos. Seeing how Ngangabouka treated liars, her stomach rolled at the prospect of being found out. If she remained any longer than the short time he promised, she would have placed herself in a very precarious position— with the other women right alongside her. She still wondered after Oné's motivation for helping. All that evening, the woman had seemed to be in lock-step with her son-in-law, his right-hand woman. Still, her assistance to Michonne, abetting her and Ariane, threw that performance into question. What did Oné want from her? _What did any of these people want with her?_

She sat up in frustration, restless.

Quietly, aware that someone was directly on the other side of her door, she slipped out of bed and went to the window. Michonne already knew the louvers were bolted into their slats so short of just smashing them to pieces there was little she could do with them. So instead her target was the old, rusted screws that kept those slats in place and allowed the hand crank to open and close them.

She'd pilfered a chicken bone from her dinner, stashing it in her underwear. Back in her room, she'd spent almost an hour sharpening it to a point. Now after another hour of digging the rust out of a single bolt she'd managed to free it. She'd be twenty months "pregnant" by the time she'd managed to do that to all the other bolts in the window. And lacking something to lubricate the nut, she was still unsure she could unscrew it fully, but she had to try something. She couldn't sit idly and wait for rescue that wasn't coming or an escape plan to fall into her lap. Michonne just didn't "do" helpless well. She had to formulate some plan, even if it was stupid or proved useless. She sighed in frustration but got back to work. She would cross the bridge of how to remove the bolts themselves when she got to it.

After yet another hour, Michonne heard words exchanged at the door. She stashed the bone and jumped back to the bed, in case someone chose to open her door then. In the end, the muffled conversation ended quickly and there was silence again. Without her watch, she had no idea of the time but looking up at the moon she guessed well after midnight.

"Hello?" She called out softly after a few minutes. François, for all his rough words and bad attitude, had quickly become a constant for her. Overnight, her jailer was someone else and she'd never glimpsed him before.

*Hello?* She tried again in her grade-school Swahili.

*Yes, Miss?* The voice, young and unexpectedly high, replied. It reminded Michonne yet again that not all of Ngangabouka's prisoners were locked behind doors, some guarded the doors themselves.

*May I use the bathroom?* She asked softly. She was hoping to lay eyes on the new person at the door.

*You have a -.*

Michonne didn't recognize the last word.

*A what?* She asked again coming to stand right on the other side of the door.

"Um, a chamber pot?" He clarified in hesitant but proficient English.

*I'd rather not use it for this.* Michonne said in French.

"Um, why not?"

She rolled her eyes, placing a hand lightly on the door and whispering through it. "Because it won't be emptied until morning. C'mon, can't I use the bathroom? I used it earlier."

There was a long silence and Michonne held her breath.

"Alright Miss, um, step back or I will have to shoot you."

Michonne stepped back quickly, stunned by how matter-of-fact that statement had been. She had no designs on trying to overpower whoever was on the other side but his calm warning made her feel doubly so. She moved to her bed across the room and sat there listening as the heavy lock flipped audibly. Slowly, the door opened.

Michonne didn't need an introduction to know who it was that stood on the other side. Looking like a tall, vaguely-masculine, exact replica of his sister was Ariane's twin brother Fabian. It was impossible to mistake. They had the same fine bone structure with high cheekbones and wide, almost almond-shaped eyes. But while Ariane was Michonne's height, the young man towered over her and if possible, he looked more gaunt than Ariane did. Skinny to the point of suggesting malnutrition, the boy was a walking skeleton.

"Please do not, um, try anything." He warned in the same flat tone he'd used to issue his last warning.

Michonne shook her head obediently.

"Come." He motioned with a rifle slung over his shoulder that was nearly his size.

She walked around him, giving him a wide berth as she exited the room toward the bathroom. Since she already knew where it was, she walked down the hall and straight for it but paused before entering.

"Can I?" She asked and he nodded.

Michonne entered and closed the door silently behind her. She leaned against the door for a minute before carrying on with her plan. Standing on the toilet seat, she'd discovered earlier that she could, on her toes, see outside a high window in the bathroom. Unfortunately, though, the window itself was still too small to get through. She'd done the math and even if she managed to shimmy her shoulders through, her hips and bottom would be stuck. The discovery of that sort of failed escape attempt was too ridiculous to contemplate. Still, she looked out seeking further clues to her location and the best means to flee, if the opportunity presented itself.

She inhaled the fresh air again and looked around. This vantage point was different than the one from her prison cell. She could tell from the trees and the location of the perimeter lights. She oriented herself again. Based on the moon and stars, she was facing westerly now. This side of the fence was also covered in old tire rubber but unlike the other side which was made of flattened, stripped tires, on this side some of the tires were still intact. Additionally, of the number of old, rusting car husks that were abandoned there, one seemed situated close enough to the perimeter fence to make a good jumping off point, if she planned to scale it.

After contemplating it for a while, Michonne realized the fencing must be electrified, which would account for why the inside of it was covered in rubber as grounding to keep people and camp animals from accidentally electrocuting themselves. But without safety precautions, one could probably still not walk straight up to the fence and climb it without risk of injury. So identifying a car she could conceivably leap from onto the fence cut her chance of electrocution drastically.

Michonne exhaled audibly, she'd just found a viable point of egress.

"Miss?" Fabian called from behind the door, startling her.

Michonne slipped down from the window, pulled the chain on the ancient toilet to flush it and answered in French. *One moment, please.*

As she stepped out of the bathroom something on the floor caught her eye. As she bent to pick it up in the dim light of the hall she realized it was a playing card —a three of hearts. Standing up, Michonne flipped it back to him with a flourish she'd learned from her UN colleague Aaron. She made it vanish for a moment behind her hand before it appeared again before his eyes. Michonne still had no idea why she'd even learned to do it...except it looked cool.

Aaron always carried a deck with him and used card tricks as a means to impress the children while disarming their parents. In the camps they visited, it had proven a good icebreaker for him but Michonne had never used that approach. Still, at some point, she'd just begun letting him teach her anyway. She was nowhere near as good as he was but over the years she'd known him, through a variety of UN Missions, she'd gotten decent at that one trick and a couple others.

Amazingly, Fabian was as wide-eyed as one of Aaron's refugee children. Michonne asked for another card with her other hand, which he eagerly gave to her. She did a simple snap change that flipped the card she was holding from the three of hearts she had originally to the Queen of Spades he handed her. To the layperson, it looked liked she had flicked the card with her index finger and thumb and with a snap, it had instantly turned into a new card. It was just a simple sleight-of-hand trick that Aaron used to confound and delight children. But to her surprise, this boy was no different, his eyes lit up with amazement. She smiled at him before handing both cards back to him.

*Can you teach me?* He asked eagerly.

*No.* She said to which his face fell. *But I can teach you something else. May I?*

Michonne reached for the whole deck in his hand, taking it gently from him. She cut the deck in two in one hand with her long nimble fingers. She then shuffled it rapidly in an arch created between her two hands. She ended the trick with a flourish that spat the cards from one hand to the other through the air like she was opening an accordion. Rick had always joked that that move made her look like a really shady customer, the kind he could lose his clothes, car keys and the deed for his house to in just one hand of cards. Whenever she did all three moves in one fluid motion, like she had just then, it was impressive... She'd worked long and hard to make it so. It was also the extent of her knowledge.

*I can teach you that. The other part, though, is...magic.* Michonne admitted conspiratorially.

By rights, Fabian was too old to have been taken in by that, Michonne thought, but it was clear he was. She wondered at how that was possible. He smiled, taking the cards back from her and palming them as if they'd reveal the secrets of her tricks by themselves.

*My name is Michonne. What's yours?*

The teenager looked up bashfully before his eyes returned to the deck in his hands. *Fabian* He answered, confirming her suspicions.

*Fabian, after you walk me back to my room, I'll show you the first trick.*

He looked back at her wearily. *I can't enter your room. It's not allowed.*

Michonne stopped smiling. "Of course not, no. I'll sit on the floor on my side of the door and you sit on yours and I'll show it to you. I promise you'll be able to do the riffle shuffle by morning." She arched her hands together again to illustrate the part of the trick she meant.

"Truly?"

"I promise," Michonne said walking slowly by the young man's side down the hall back to her room. "You don't even have to say who taught you. It'll be our secret."

* * *

Kisangani, DRC

Rick left his clandestine meeting with Carter no more substantially informed than he had been prior but the Colonel had promised to keep him in the loop and offered any aid or resources he might need. And whether or not Rick wanted to admit it, Carter's considerable resources could come in handy.

Rick returned to his office intent on delving into the brain-numbing intricacies of the UN's supply chain. It was a job well outside his wheelhouse. The small amount of overlap his department had with the procurement process was mainly in making requests, vetting vendors and coordinating their transport security. It was a rubber-stamp affair he mainly left to Shane to handle. So it was his friend he looked for immediately upon entering the department.

Shane was deep into something when he walked up to his desk. Rick rapped on the edge of the desktop with his knuckles as he came to a stop in front of it.

"Hey," Rick said easily, though the last day or so between the two men had been less than ideal.

Shane didn't smile as he looked up from his work, just resting his forearms across the papers on his desk and leaning forward with a short nod.

Rick was baffled.

Nothing had changed. Shane just didn't seem to share his sense of urgency about Michonne's bizarre absence at all. It was as if he knew with absolute certainty that she was fine. It made no sense. But, of course it was hardly the first time that they had been at odds in their lives. Still this time, it felt strange, more remote. In his extracurriculars, Shane played harder than Rick did by a fair margin but he still took his job very seriously. And their jobs, fundamentally, entailed protecting the people of this Mission, whether individually or as a group. So by rights, Shane should, at the very least, have found Michonne's disappearance concerning professionally, if not personally.

Yet they could hardly even agree she was actually gone. It did not make sense as far as Rick was concerned. Shane should care, normally he _did_ care. Despite their frequent mutual grumbling, Michonne, Shane and Rick were very much the three Musketeers at any Mission where they were all stationed together. Now, unlike with Lori, who genuinely loved Shane, Rick was under no misconception that _he_ wasn't the glue that held their little trio together. Still, they _were_ a trio nonetheless. So Shane's current appearance of indifference was all the more inexplicable.

"I, um, wanted to come by…" Rick hesitated as he stood at the desk. "Look—"

"C'mon, what's up, Bubba?" Shane revived an ancient nickname then cracked a small smile. "You need somethin'? A little help? Some advice? 'As long as it's a joke and not a dick, don't take it so hard.'" Shane winked at him.

Rick couldn't help a small smile as he shook his head looking down at the floor briefly. _Shane was always a whole trip without buying a single plane ticket_.

"Hilarious," He pronounced drily as Shane broke out in an actual chuckle. "Listen, I'm gonna have a look at the requisitions and procurement for the past year and a half or so. Any suggestions about _that_? Like, where to start?"

Shane sobered and sat up straight. "Sure, sure, start over there," He stuck his pen behind his ear and used his finger to point at a cabinet across the room. "That drawer there, overflows into the next one, down there."

Rick looked surprised. "That's a lot of paperwork."

"Yeah well, I think so too," Shane grumbled with a thinly-veiled attitude. He had always hated being saddled with that job.

"It's cross-referenced by vendor, region, assignment, employee, officer and/or case file," Shane said before reaching for his pen and returning to the papers in front of him. Rick cocked his head to the side and peered down at them while still trying not to obviously read over Shane's shoulder.

"Transfer" was the only word Rick made out before Shane looked up at him expectantly, covering it slightly with his large palms. "Anything else I can do you for, Chief?"

Rick stepped back on his heel, surprised to be so thoroughly dismissed and reflexively wiped a thumb under his eye like there was something there. "Uh, no. I'm, I'm good."

Shane went back to his work without another word. Rick headed over to the large file cabinets that lined one entire wall of the office. They were a shade of putrid green that somehow managed to compliment the wood grain paneling of the large open room and they were so tall they towered overhead. The metal behemoths were of the type that had to be bolted to the wall for fear of toppling over and actually crushing someone. Another remnant of the building's previous colonial tenants. Rick generally avoided them, leaving filing of that sort to the office assistant they shared with two other departments. It would be untrue to say he had never seen the inside of any of the drawers but it wouldn't be far from it.

He pulled at the silver handle of the drawer at eye-level labeled "Requisitions" but it wouldn't budge. He tried again, and then yet again slightly embarrassed he couldn't somehow accomplish something their four-foot-eleven secretary accomplished with seeming ease daily.

"One of the other shelves is probably open, Boss," Samir called from his desk. "We know it's been a while for you."

"It's okay to take it slow," Someone else called out behind him.

"No judgment. Give it a minute, it'll come back," Aarav contributed.

"It's like riding a bike. Muscle memory." Yet another announced from the peanut gallery.

Rick turned to see Samir, Aarav and a couple of his other guys watching, snickering. As he acknowledged them, the laughter grew, catching the attention of more and more of the staff. Rick's face reddened. He checked to make certain all the drawers were completely closed with one hand and then to his chagrin, the drawer he wanted slipped open with ease in the other. The onlookers cracked up, clapping for him.

It wasn't long ago he'd been one of them. He didn't seem to recall this much teasing of his predecessor, Caleb. Then just as quickly as he thought that, he remembered when Aarav and Jim deliberately left broccoli to rot in Caleb's office waste bin over a weekend and the time Shane nailed the door to Caleb's coat closet shut and when even Rick participated in covering his boss' office fan in glitter on a sweltering day. He realized then he'd actually been getting off pretty easy by comparison and laughed at the memory... and himself.

But in that moment of levity, Rick glanced over at Shane and noticed, his best friend was the only person in the whole room that was not laughing.


	38. Chapter 38

_7/27/15 20:19 CAT_

Medical Station Omicron, Rwanda

Rick watched Michonne carefully.

She didn't say anything as their group filed out with Negan but her eyes spoke volumes. Michonne stared at them as they exited, yet Rick could tell her mind was miles away. But unlike Lori, who could not be made to even look at him when she was angry, Michonne usually stared him down boldly. He was waiting for that but knew she wouldn't in front of an audience. When they were alone, that was when the talking would begin. And as he expected, once the room emptied, her eyes drifted toward him, ready to engage. Surprise and frustration warred with anger on her face, but he knew it wasn't a confrontation she was after. It was understanding, as if she could somehow glean his thought process just by reading it on his face.

But there was something else there too— a dispassionate element to her open appraisal of him that stung. As if she just refused to be hurt by anything he could tell her now. In fact, he was certain, if she had the strength, she would have just gotten out of the chair and come closer to poke or prod him like a specimen looking for answers. For the first time ever, Rick was actually grateful that Michonne wasn't at one hundred percent, she was formidable at her full capacity. But as it was, he could tell, she barely had the energy to wheel herself without assistance, let alone wrestle a satisfactory explanation out of him. Still, he hoped he could provide her with one nonetheless.

"So you're leaving," She said before he had even opened his mouth.

"He's protecting nearly a thousand people, 'Chonne," Rick explained, choosing to start with the only thing that might matter to her.

She scoffed.

"What, in here? _Please_ ," Michonne said incredulously. "This facility looks like it could house two hundred tops."

"No, in his main compound. They call it 'The Sanctuary'. It's a hidden village on Mount Karisimbi."

"The volcano? With the mudslides? Are you kidding me with this?"

Rick shook his head. He had already thought all of this and so knew exactly what she was talking about. Karisimbi was an inactive volcanic mountain, the highest in the region, surrounded by highly active ones. It would be incredibly dangerous —but smart— to make your refuge there if you didn't want government authorities snooping around. Hidden amongst a national park and protected as endangered Silverback Gorilla habitat, it was a place no one would think to look. The trade-off, however, was what would happen if it or one of the other neighboring volcanoes should suddenly decide to erupt.

"Think about it. The near toxic CO2 levels nearby, the eruptions, the animals, the snow, why would anyone look up there?"

"People suspected," Michonne said more to herself than him. "My hairdresser swore…."

"But no one ever looked," Rick answered.

She seemed to finally see the logic in it. "And now he _claims_ there are a thousand people there?"

The skepticism returned to her voice. He'd been there also, so he just took a beat to explain in the surprisingly, almost patient way that Negan had explained it to him hours ago.

"When the information about people turning in Goma and Nord Kivu started trickling into the villages, people started heading for the hills." Rick didn't mean to pun but he smiled a little at it anyway.

Michonne shook her head in disapproval. He understood how she might not be in the place to make light and continued. "The locals have always had a pretty good idea of where the Sanctuary and his other compounds were. So they just went there. And the Sanctuary kept taking the people in —these are their neighbors, remember? The people who'd been helping to keep their location secret all along."

Michonne nodded looking intrigued now. It was almost humorous to watch her move through the same phases of disbelief then belief that he did. This story was nearly identical to the story that had made Negan a folk hero during the civil war to begin with.

"It's snowing up there for them right now and for some reason, even as the sickness started to spread out into the smaller and smaller villages, the things didn't follow them up into the mountains. Meaning if they made it to the Sanctuary, they were safe. Neither of us could figure that out but then Mamet told us—"

"They don't do well in precipitation of any kind, yes I know," She spoke over him sharply, with sudden irritation.

Rick stopped speaking for a moment, bewildered. "What?"

"' _Us'_? Since when are you and DaDa Ngangabouka an _us_?" She hissed, not wanting the words to escape the confines of the kitchen.

He nodded, feeling chastened for not using his words more carefully. She was completely right, even in the midst of their so-called truce, he and Negan were not actually allies but actors allied by a common enemy. He couldn't afford to forget that even if just in speech.

"Right," He came closer and added soberly. "The creatures haven't breached the snowline. It's like they can't. So anyone that can make it past, has. To the tune of nearly a thousand, at the last count."

Rick hadn't believed it either until Negan had one of his men Skype into the compound. It was heartrending. There were people as far as his eyes and the small laptop camera could see. As Negan's man walked the camera around the compound, the full scale of the problem became evident. It was like all of the worst camps Rick had ever seen, with pallets and cots, sleeping bags and just blankets, children crying in soiled, sometimes bloodied clothing and animals roaming freely around the area scavenging for scraps.

Plus, it was cold. Everywhere the heavily pixelated image revealed, he could see the snowpack and people using whatever they could find, grain sacks, newspaper, etc. to stave off the bitter chill. Still, despite that, the tipping point for Rick was seeing even Negan's pained expression when the leader left in charge in his absence admitted that they would very soon be reduced to hunting for bushmeat to feed the ever-growing horde of hungry mouths. Food had become scarce in record time due to their numbers.

Rick shared this with Michonne and watched as she grew horrified. _Bushmeat_ , the flesh of wild game but particularly large mammals like primates and gorillas, was a very dangerous gamble. All by itself, it could give rise to contagion within the Sanctuary, up to and including diseases such as Ebola. When he finally admitted it, the fact of the matter was, Negan had come to the USAMRIID facility looking for help, himself. Which, luckily, put Rick in a very unique position to bargain. And for the first and likely only time ever, they discovered they were both joined in a search for exactly the same thing...a cure.

Michonne sat and pondered everything he'd told her, silently.

"I figure this will fall apart the moment that we get something, if we get something. But for right now, we're at a cease-fire."

"Rick, he _cannot_ be trusted," She reiterated firmly, looking up at him from the contemplative gaze she'd had before.

"I know. I don't believe we can either" He affirmed, hoping she'd see he wouldn't be taken in by any platitudes. Not that so far Negan had seemed much for bromides.

"And still, knowing that, you choose to leave me here anyway?" She sounded betrayed, which pained him.

"Some people have to stay. That was a non-negotiable."

It was true. Negan had been completely unwilling to discuss the idea of Rick's entire group leaving to Aberdeen. Rick couldn't blame him. He wanted assurances that Rick would come back. But, if he was completely honest, Rick's resistance to the idea was largely kabuki anyway. Michonne and Sasha were hurt and this was a medical facility. He'd be a fool to pull Michonne out of one of the safest places currently known, to risk her life on this new mission while she was still recovering. And he was willing to let Rosita, an army officer with medic and weapons training, and Glenn, a fellow marine, stay with them, in case things went pear-shaped. In the end, that was sufficient 'insurance' of his return for Negan.

"I've had nightmares about when I was his 'guest' before, I just can't believe you would leave me here with him," Michonne whispered.

Rick was stunned. After it happened, at her insistence, they had a very limited discussion about the time she'd spent in Negan's compound. She would only talk about what type of man he was, never specifically what had actually happened. And then she was gone, back to Georgia, out of the UN and out of his life. Since then Rick had hated the man for what he and Shane had done to her, though he never knew precisely what that was. And he hated him still, that much hadn't changed in eight hours. But he'd had to make the decision to work with Negan for everyone's sake and he'd made the best of it. Now though, Michonne's reaction made him wonder yet again, if he was all wrong.

A single tear slipped down her cheek, that she brushed away quickly. It nearly killed Rick. _He had no idea what to say._ _What other choice did he honestly have?_ She could not be allowed to travel in her condition. It was clear just by looking at her that she would not be up for the journey. He'd been certain he was doing the right thing, given the circumstances, but now Michonne's response threw that into doubt.

Rick realized suddenly, he'd only truly loved two women in his life and in less than 72 hours he'd managed to fail them both. "Michonne, I—"

"No, you don't get to be the martyr now," She interrupted his thoughts. "You don't get to blame yourself for everything that has gone wrong in the last two days. I share the blame along with you, him _and_ the rest of the world for even falling apart in the first place. You couldn't control that, Rick. You don't _get to_ control that."

He came even closer and took a knee before her. He rested his head on his arm on the armrest she wasn't using. She kept her eyes on him the entire time.

"Michonne—" He started again not knowing what it was he was going to say but only that he had to get on the same page with her. He couldn't leave if they weren't.

"When was the last time you closed your eyes?" She cut him off to ask quietly, her expression softening. Rick's eyes closed briefly when she ran a hand through his hair then put it to his face. The same hand ran gently down his cheek before cupping his stubbled jaw and Rick exhaled deeply.

Even Rosita in the midst of her minor medical checkup hadn't thought to ask him that. He had to stop and actually consider the question for a moment as Michonne stroked his ear with her thumb soothingly. He hadn't had more than a couple of hours of sleep since he checked into his hotel in North Carolina the afternoon before everything began. _So what was that, almost 96 hours ago?_ Even he knew that was bad.

"I've closed my eyes." He answered evasively.

He touched the hand that touched his face, careful of the PVC taped to her arm with the IV line still in it. He turned his face into her hand and kissed her palm. Just as she had seemed unsurprised by his kiss days ago, she didn't react, just moving on, but still caressing his cheek.

"Oh yeah? Really, when? Tell me when." She seemed so tired herself and yet she was still concerned for him.

"What do you mean? I blink all the time. See? I did it just now," He said it drily even though it was meant as a joke. Suddenly, even he was too tired for humor.

She didn't smile at his effort anyway, instead shaking her head. "We're not there yet. I'm not happy with you. And, I'm not sure we'll get there before you have to go," She said honestly.

Michonne was always so honest with him. And right now she was truly upset, although, perhaps it wasn't as dire as it seemed. She disagreed but they were still obviously on the same side. That had to be a start. He realized, _maybe he needed to be perfectly honest with her right now too_?

"We might need to get there. I mean, before I leave. What being here has made me see is, it was just good fortune that we found each other in the first place and dumb luck that we got this far. That kind of streak ends eventually. We'd be stupid to think it won't."

Michonne pulled her hand away from his face and for a moment Rick felt bereft. "So, really you're leaving me here where you think I'll be safe in case you _don't_ come back. Is that it?"

She frowned and leaned back and away from him in her chair.

He didn't have the means to lie to her. He just looked down at his foot and the wheels of the chair, hating that she was trapped in it. Hating that she was so fragile right now, that she couldn't be at his side. Hating that she couldn't come with him, whether she believed it or not.

"No, no pity. No convincing yourself that this is for my own good. Look at me," Michonne said firmly.

Rick did it immediately, steeling himself against any look of betrayal or recrimination he might see reflected there. But there was none.

"We're in this together, you and me. You aren't doing this alone. You don't get to act unilaterally."

"I wish you _had_ been there," He admitted trying to control his irritation, not with her but at the circumstances. "You're the lawyer. Negotiation is your deal not mine. This wasn't me being unilateral. You were unconscious and I had to deal. Not only for you, for everyone. This was me doing what I thought was—"

He stopped himself before he told a lie. Nothing in him thought this arrangement was "best" and as usual Michonne seemed to read that on his face. She grew pensive for a moment hesitating before speaking.

"Look, I'm not saying you're wrong or even that I could have negotiated anything better. In fact, I doubt it." She spoke softly, barely above a whisper. "...But what I am saying is, this was a decision we should have made _together_. You and me. You had no right to agree to this alone. Since day one, we've _always_ been in this together," She said again and they stared into each other's eyes for a moment, digesting the words, as real as any vow of devotion.

"I'm sorry. It's not that I'm trying to control you."

"I know, but Rick, tell me, when did you plan to let me know about Tobin, about T-Dog? Why is it that you think you get to make those decisions for me? What I get to know and what I don't?"

Rick thought for a second of who he was going to have to kill for telling her.

"No one told me. But they're the only two people I haven't seen since I woke up. And I remember Carol was piloting the plane here. What am I an idiot that I can't put two and two together?"

Michonne sucked her teeth, something she did rarely. He was in trouble.

"Listen, you don't get to keep things from me for my 'protection'. You are neither my Daddy," The tiny bit of a Georgian accent that she'd largely lost by being shipped off to boarding school when her mother died in her childhood, slipped out then. "Nor are you my husband. It's no longer your job to protect me."

"Yeah, yes it is," He countered emphatically, nodding his head low. He felt that in his bones, but for some reason, he suddenly worried that the intensity of that conviction might somehow scare her, so he looked at the floor.

Michonne moved forward again, leaning over him as he knelt before her. "Rick Grimes, that hasn't been your job in quite a few years now. And I took on _this_ mission with the understanding that it would be as your partner not merely your protectee."

He looked back up into her expressive brown eyes that always seemed to speak paragraphs even when she wasn't talking. Even ill and sapped of her usual energy, she was still so strong and so beautiful. He was speechless under the ferocity of her gaze. _Still, he could see she didn't get it._ And he didn't know how to say it. To say that protecting her would _always_ be his job. That if she would only let him, he would happily make it a permanent part of his life...along with loving her. _Forever_.

He swallowed his frustration looking for another way to come to a meeting of the minds that wouldn't veer off into another argument…. Or whatever it was that they called an argument since they had never actually raised their voices at each other in over a decade of friendship. Shane used to joke that they were like an old vaudeville pair, the way they artfully circled each other until they got to the punchline.

"You love me," He said plainly then at a loss for anything else to say. It was a sudden declaration but not a difficult one since he knew he felt the same. Still, she looked flabbergasted for a moment.

"Where did that come from? W-where'd you get that from?" She asked, uncharacteristically flustered by the seeming non sequitur.

"You told me."

"I've never— I did not," She protested, though her face nearly gave her away. A twitch at her mouth threatened to reveal more.

 _Wasn't he supposed to be the one with the obvious "tells"?_

"You did." He nodded in contradiction to her. "Today in fact. When we were all waiting outside to get in. You actually told everyone."

"I, what? Well, I— I was high. Nothing said under sedation counts."

He could see her face was burning with mortification, though the warm, deep brown of her skin never changed color.

"You also shared that you thought my eyes were cute. 'Pool blue', I think you called them," He was now deliberately teasing her because he saw how off-center it put her. "Said they sucked you in from the very first day we met. You also said something about Dixon looking like the Sphinx?"

"I did?" She covered her face with her hands and peered out at him from between two fingers.

He nodded again, "In front of _everyone_. Honestly, I gotta admit, I was a little embarrassed by that too."

"God, I'm sorry, Rick."

"Why should you be, if it's true? I mean, I agree," He admitted deciding to put an end to her misery...and the great unspoken thing of their lives. "So I'm kinda relieved it's true for you too."

She dropped her hands and looked at him in shock. He could also admit it was a little weird having it finally 'out there'.

"About loving you, I mean, not about Daryl being like the Sphinx," He clarified, smiling. "I love you. I know you know it's true. So, don't bother looking surprised. You've known for a while."

She suddenly looked endearingly bashful, wide-eyed and stunned at what he'd admitted. Rick didn't see the point of pretending anymore. The past three days had shown him the necessity of seizing moments as they came and not waiting for the 'proper' time.

Despite everything that had gone wrong between them, he now fervently wished he could have had that contentious phone conversation two days ago with Lori back. He wished he could have used that precious time to just thank her for his children. For birthing them, raising them, caring for them and ultimately, sacrificing her life for them. In retrospect, he also longed to have back the hours he'd spent in briefings aboard the Ticonderoga that ultimately proved to be filled with useless information. That was time he could have just spent with Carl and Judith before he left. Time was no longer plentiful for the wasting. He'd discovered he couldn't and _wouldn't_ wait for a "better" time to say this.

"Michonne, I love you," He said it again matter-of-factly, like the inescapable truth it was to him.

"Don't, don't do this." The mildly amused look she'd worn a moment before fell away, a somber one replacing it.

"Do what?"

"This. What about Lori?"

"What about Lori? I'm heartbroken for my kids but she's dead." He recognized how cold he sounded the minute he said it and the look on Michonne's face made him wish he'd phrased it better.

"And she died three _days_ ago. Not three years ago."

"Believe me, I know that and I feel that but _that_ has nothing to do with _this_." He gestured between the two of them.

Michonne sighed heavily and Rick wasn't certain whether it was the weight of the conversation or her general fatigue that was exhausting her now. The fact that she was out of bed and moving around was a testament to her relentless spirit. But everyone had their limits, perhaps after all these years he'd finally found Michonne at hers. ...Or maybe he was misunderstanding this entirely, which never occurred to him before that second.

 _Was it possible that she didn't lo—_

"We can't, I— I promised Lori." For the first time, Rick thought possibly ever, Michonne seemed genuinely at a loss for words. Which was fine because he was too.

"What does Lori have to do with it? And what do you mean 'you promised her'?" He asked relieved that she hadn't just said flat-out that she didn't share his feelings.

Michonne set her mouth, clearly not wanting to speak on it further.

"'Chonne, c'mon, talk to me." Despite this being the most completely inappropriate time and place, Rick found he now needed to know. "Please."

She sighed again before speaking. "About two years ago, I got a letter from her."

Rick was shocked. He rose, initially bracing his arm on her knee before he stood and paced a step away from her. Two years ago, he had no idea where Michonne was, though he had thought of her often. It was hard to hear that Lori had known all that time. He suddenly supposed that Lori was right, this very thing was part of the problem between them, in the end. _A total lack of communication._

"How?"

Michonne shrugged. "Maybe we know some of the same people?"

Rick doubted that but acknowledged that Michonne could have been completely contactable through their extended UN family the whole time. The truth was it probably wouldn't have been too hard to reach her, which was why he had made a deliberate choice not to try, despite wanting it desperately.

"In the letter, she wrote that she was pregnant with Judith. That you'd come back from international assignment, you were both trying to make your marriage work again. She indicated that you guys were starting over and she was confident that now you were back to stay, everything would be alright."

 _That sounded about right for two years ago._ They had decided he would come home for good, that they would seek counseling and try to rediscover what they had loved about each other in the beginning. "Yes, but what did any of that have to do with you?"

"Well, I wondered that too. Apparently, she'd seen me at Lenox Square Mall and once she knew I was back in Atlanta she needed to know that I wouldn't try and 'rekindle' anything—I don't know what she thought was going on between us before, Rick," Michonne skewered him with a look out of the corner of her eye, to which he looked back innocently shaking his head. "But she wanted my assurances that it was over now. Completely."

"Did you tell her nothing happened?"

She looked at him flatly. "It was a _letter_ , Captain? I didn't _tell_ her anything. But more importantly, did nothing happen? I mean between us, would that have been the honest truth? Or was it always just true that we had never _acted_ on them. The feelings...you know? They were there, you just said so yourself. So, was she entirely wrong?"

Rick shook his head though he sincerely wished he didn't have to. It felt like confirming Lori's accusations. He knew he'd been a faithful husband to Lori but in those last few years, in his heart….

"Then what could I really write, other than 'okay'? Which I did. I sent her a small wicker basket with a few things for Judith and a card wishing you both all the best going forward."

"That was you? She told me that basket came from a distant cousin."

He did actually remember that basket. A lovely, ornate thing made of Carolina seagrass containing the most beautiful, intricate layette set. It was far nicer than anything that particular cousin had ever given Lori before, including on the occasion of their wedding. And when Rick had tried to insist that they call the woman together to thank her, Lori had said she'd handle it on her own.

 _No wonder._

Michonne shrugged diplomatically, as if to say 'what did it matter now?' but Rick still bristled at his ex-wife's deceitfulness nonetheless.

"Rick, she did what she could to protect her family. If I were her I would be completely unapologetic about that. I'd be ferocious even. And I didn't blame her, not then, not now."

Rick thought he caught a brief frown that suggested that that wasn't entirely true or that there was something more to it. But it disappeared from Michonne's face just as quickly.

"The point is, I don't want to jump in her grave." Michonne frowned again at her own choice of words. "I mean I—"

"I know what you meant but Lori and I have been divorced for almost a year."

Michonne couldn't hide her surprise. "Rick, I'm so sorry."

With anyone else, it would have been disingenuous words. But despite the implications for them, he could tell she really meant that. It was one of the things he loved about Michonne. How she only ever wanted the best for him, his family, her friends, regardless of the personal cost. How concern for him and undoubtedly Carl and Judith made the prospect of his divorce, not good news to her.

It was his turn to shrug. "We tried, it didn't work."

"Michonne," He kneeled again before her, like a supplicant. "You aren't jumping into anyone's grave, or taking anyone's place or stepping into anyone's shoes or occupying anyone's position, except your own. The one that's already been yours for quite some time now. Do you want it?"

 _Because that was the question, wasn't it? ...Did she want a life, whatever kind this new world would allow, with him?_

Her eyes widened and began to grow glassy. Her bottom lip quivered with emotion. Rick hoped suddenly that these were happy tears.

"Do you love me?" He asked earnestly, his heart thundering in his chest despite the fact that he thought, _hoped_ , he already knew the answer.

"Yes." She nodded. Her voice, just above a whisper, broke on the single simple syllable.

"Good," Rick said exhaling audibly. _He had been holding his breath._ "'Cuz this could have gotten real weird. I love you too."

He'd said it for a third time now. And it felt a little bit better every time he said it out loud to her.

She laughed a little at his joke and it broke the enormous tension that had lingered between them since he'd walked into the kitchen earlier. _They had gotten there._

"Do you trust me?"

Michonne nodded unable to speak, brushing away with both hands the tears that were now flowing freely over her lashes and sliding down the sides of her nose. She smiled at him through her tears.

"Do you believe I'll do everything in my power to come back to you?"

She nodded again.

Rick leaned forward slowly at the same moment she did and pressed his lips gently to hers. He could taste the salt of her tears on his tongue as she yielded to him, opening her mouth and welcoming him. He cradled her head in his hands as the kiss deepened, savoring her bottom lip. Michonne's nose brushed his as she turned her head and he inhaled her. He could smell the faint remnants of the rosewater that she still sprayed in her locs even after all these years. She brought her hand up to rake her long, slender fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck, making his scalp tingle and bringing him even closer. After a moment, they were breathless, devouring each other ravenously. Their mutual desire growing demanding as if unleashing a thing caged too long. The sounds of Michonne's little whimpers and the unexpected corresponding moans from him as their lips met echoed in the acoustics of the empty space.

 _She was his...finally._

"Oh good. You've made up." A voice said drily from behind him.

They fell away from each other abruptly like two teenagers caught doing something illicit and looked in the direction of the voice. Negan peeked his head in the doors, his face that of a mischievous imp. Rick stood quickly and turned to the man, trying to block his view of Michonne. He was instantly irritated to have been caught by Negan in such a vulnerable moment.

"Are you almost done? 'Cuz my folks need the room." Negan opened the two swinging doors more fully and stood between them. "This is where the magic happens —I mean, other than the kind you two are planning. And it's past dinner time, know what I mean? Including your crew we got a lot of mouths to feed in here, they gotta get cracking."

Rick turned and saw as Michonne looked up shamefaced at him as she wiped a thumb across her glistening bottom lip. Rick fought the sudden feeling of arousal the sight gave him. _This was not the time._ She looked from Negan to Rick, seeming to read his face. It was nothing to be ashamed of or to hide, particularly since everyone had an inkling anyway, but Negan was definitely not the first person he would have chosen to "come out" to. Michonne's expression said almost exactly the same thing.

"Can you give us a minute?" Rick requested politely turning back to face their intruder, despite wanting to instead yell at him to get the fuck out.

"No," Negan said sternly as if he knew exactly what it was Rick wanted to say and had a few choice words of his own. Then just as quickly he broke into his patented reptilian grin as Rick frowned.

"Oops, I forgot myself there for a moment, 'Friends'. Sure. _You got one minute_."

He backed out the door looking at his wristwatch.

Michonne followed Negan out with her eyes and then spoke quietly. "I don't trust that guy as far as I can throw him and right now…."

She looked up at Rick from her chair, as he turned back from the doors to face her. "But I believe that you can do this and come back to me. I believe that we've gotten too far for this to be the end...for you or me."

Rick sighed heavily with relief. This was precisely what he'd been thinking about since yesterday. He wasn't sure about his belief in God anymore but he now believed there was still a Plan. And that he and Michonne, together, was some small part of it.

"This isn't the end. Not for us."

"Not for us," She reaffirmed like an oath.

Rick bent forward, anchoring his hands on her armrests and planted a kiss on her forehead and then another firmly on her lips.

"That was nice. You can keep doing that," Michonne said as he straightened and walked around her to take the handles of her chair.

Rick pushed her toward the doors.

" _Oh, I will_."


	39. Chapter 39

May 8th 2011

Kisangani, DRC

It was eight o'clock in the evening before Rick finished with the files. He looked up at the clock above his office door and stretched, long and leonine. "Agh," he exclaimed loudly into the silence of the completely empty space as he cracked his shoulders rotating them.

Other than popping his head in the office to inform Rick he was taking off around six, Shane had said nothing more to him all day. It was peculiar. Rick knew he was leaving to join Maggie in recanvasing Michonne's neighbors in Tshopo, but it was obvious his participation was entirely an exercise in humoring his fiancée and best friend. That fact created an impenetrable tension between the two of them. It was clear Shane expected Michonne to waltz into the office in another couple of days with gifts for everyone and a story of her adventures, like she'd done after other vacations at other Missions.

Rick shook his head at the thought of it. He knew Shane's intentions were good but it was frustrating. So at this point, they'd each given up on trying to convince the other, with Maggie caught somewhere in between. Rick had resisted panicking as day two flowed into day three in part for her benefit. He also avoided worrying about himself and Shane by knowing definitively that they would be back on the same page once one of them was proven right. And probably for the first time in their whole relationship, Rick honestly hoped it would be Shane.

Rick pushed the last of the files away from him on the desk in frustration. It was a complete dead-end. For a man who absolutely detested paperwork and anything that chained him to a desk, Shane was remarkably meticulous in his record keeping. It was a trait he'd had since childhood. As freewheeling, extroverted and carefree as Shane appeared outwardly, that was how fastidious, precise and controlled he was when you got to know him. Most people just didn't get to see that side of him.

It was the side that doted on his grandmother and made very particular and detailed arrangements for her care during his frequent absences. Though Rick and Lori offered their assistance, Shane prided himself on handling it all. He had set aside money ever since his very first job at the local autobody shop to finance that care. He'd been covering her entire mortgage since he was in his late-teens through careful money management. This was the part of Shane that made him a bigger Little League booster for Carl than Rick could hope to be— to the point of obnoxiousness. And it also accounted for all the dutifully but poorly repaired items in the Grimes household while Rick was away. It was the part of him that Rick respected most and the part most women who dated Shane glimpsed only fleetingly but few ever got access to.

Rick sighed and got up. This had given him nothing. As he knew it would, everything looked fine. Yet, he couldn't discount the UN entirely until he'd done as he demanded of Carter and examined the inventory itself. That was a daunting task that, in reality, he knew he could not accomplish alone in the amount of time he had — _which was_ _not nearly enough._ This was normally where he'd have needed Shane's assistance but the guy was so plainly resistant that Rick knew he wouldn't even bother to call. Instead _,_ he just left his office and headed to the warehouse, tired, frustrated but still intent on phase two.

* * *

Four hours passed without Rick having any awareness of it. He was making virtually glacial progress. He hopped out of the warehouse's small forklift and stood in front of the second enormous steel shelving unit with the clipboard he'd taken from the requisitions office. He bent down next to the pallet he'd just pulled down from the high shelf to check the inventory number against that in his ledger. So far, as expected, everything matched up perfectly— counts, dates, suppliers and recipients. Nothing was out of order.

As he ran his fingers over a dusty shipping label to clean it, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He stopped and looked around. It appeared that he was alone in the long, wide aisle, but he was also certain he'd seen something. Years of doing security work had finely honed those skills. He wouldn't second-guess himself. He quietly put the clipboard on the boxes in front of him and turned in the direction he thought he'd seen the movement. He'd already seen the security guard that patrolled the facility a few minutes earlier. It would be at least another hour before he saw him again —and that was provided the man didn't take a little break in between trips.

He walked to the end of his aisle, the sound of his boot heels hitting the concrete beneath his feet echoed. He looked left and right.

"Hello?" He said in a tone just above his normal speaking voice. This late at night in this isolated corner of the warehouse there was no need to shout. "Who's there?"

Rick stepped into the adjacent aisle and looked down the long corridor but saw nothing. He knew he hadn't imagined it. In light of what had happened to Michonne and its potential connection to what he was doing, he decided not to take a chance. He removed his sidearm from the gun scabbard attached to his belt and slipped off the safety.

"I'm only going to ask one more time. And I'm armed. C'mon out."

A figure stepped out of the shadows on his left. He turned toward the movement but didn't raise his gun. He had a fairly good idea who it was just from the lanky shape, slouched bearing and awkward gait.

"Noah? What are you still doing here, it's late." Rick quickly returned the gun to his holster for fear of spooking the boy.

"C'mere, come into the light," He instructed.

Noah Lissouba, the doctor's teenaged nephew worked in the warehouse in an internship of sorts. An extremely bright young man, he'd run into some trouble when his father passed away unexpectedly the previous spring. Clara, worried about him since his mother had younger twin boys to contend with also, had asked Shane and Rick to look out for him. It had been at Shane's suggestion that he began to work for the UN as part of their local support staff. So far his supervisors had given him nothing but good remarks. So it concerned Rick that he would be lurking around the warehouse this late in the evening.

Rick checked his watch. "It's after midnight. You've missed the last bus home."

Noah and his family lived further away in the outer communes than even Michonne did. There was no way Rick would let him walk home at this time of night, if that was what he planned.

"Hi Captain, I know." Noah came closer hanging his head and slouching more. He was a handsome kid with a long angular face but with very large sorrowful eyes. Rick didn't know him before his father passed but to look at him now it was hard to imagine him any other way.

Noah hesitated. "I was planning to sleep in the office."

"Noah, I can't have that," Rick said in delicate admonishment. He came up to him and put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Why didn't you go home?"

"My mother's met someone," he admitted. "We don't get along."

Rick shook his head.

He could never understand people who put their mates or potential partners above their children. If, God forbid, anything should happen to him he prayed Lori would have the good sense to choose someone that not only loved her but cared for Carl too. Someone Carl could relate to and respect in Rick's absence, someone who would love Carl like his own. The alternative gave Rick cold sweats. Sometimes he thanked God that in that case, Carl and Lori would still have Shane there to look out for them...and vet any new man in their lives.

"I'm very sorry about that, truly, but I can't allow you to sleep in the warehouse."

"Why? That's what Edward does."

Rick chuckled in spite of himself. Edward was the security guard. Noah was nearly genius-level smart but Rick had previously noticed in their interactions that there was something different about the way he thought. Something very literal. "Edward's not paid to sleep. If he is, that's a conversation for another day. C'mon, you'll stay with me."

Rick remembered in that moment that he now had a spare bedroom. The one Shane had so recently left. He didn't want to make this a habit but for tonight it would work. He would take Noah to his apartment and then come back to resume the search a little later after the young man had gone to sleep.

"I was watching you before," Noah commented, brightening seemingly at the prospect of staying with Rick for the night. "What are you doing here? Can I help?"

"I'm checking the inventory," Rick answered. "I have to go through every pallet in this whole building. I'm looking for any...mistakes."

Rick decided to be careful with his words. He wasn't suspicious of Noah but the young man could speak with anyone and accidentally reveal something he shouldn't.

"I want to make sure that everything they say is in these crates and containers is really in there. So I'm opening the boxes and checking them against the ledgers."

Just saying it out loud was depressing and daunting. Rick sighed involuntarily.

"That will take you days," Noah remarked oblivious to self-evident nature of the statement. "Why are you doing it that way?" He asked simply.

"How do you mean?" Rick asked. _Was there another way of eyeballing the inventory to get a true count that he was unaware of?_

"If I tell you, can I help?"

"Son, I suspect, if you tell me you'll _have_ to help," Rick admitted, now genuinely curious.

Noah smiled, a rare thing, Rick realized suddenly.

"Well, we know from our records exactly how much a pallet of any item in the warehouse should weigh. If we don't, we can just look it up on the computer. Then we weigh the pallets ourselves when they enter the facility —for storage purposes. And we also know how much they weigh leaving —for shipment purposes. All you have to do is check the weights against each other. If they're different than they should be, then you know which pallets you have to examine. That can all be done by cross-referencing the ledgers with the shipping manifests. Any anomalies we find can be checked by hand. My guess is doing it that way will cut down your physical labor tonight by as much as 80%."

Rick just looked at the young man dumbstruck.

"If you're actually looking for malfeasance. You'll catch that too. No one ever remembers to account for the weight differences. I mean, no one but me and I don't plan to break the law."

Rick could have kissed the boy. "You are most definitely going to be helping me out." He slapped Noah on the back and walked with him toward the office where the inventory records were kept.

* * *

The good feelings were extremely short-lived. As Noah predicted, with his method, a clear pattern of embezzlement and misappropriation quickly revealed itself. Small quantities of weapons, equipment and ordinary supplies were being skimmed from the top of shipments, with heavier pallets entering the facility than necessary to the quantities being purchased, lighter pallets leaving and vice versa. Carter wasn't wrong, the UN was definitely involved. But as most of the pallets in question came from AfriCOM, they were also implicated...just as Michonne had alleged. It accounted for millions of dollars worth of merchandise, more than enough to kill to keep quiet. Rick's blood ran cold.

At minutes to six in the morning, Rick sent Noah to catch the early bus home for some sleep in his own bed and then placed a call.

"Embry," Carter answered through a yawn.

"Carter? Rick." He dragged his fingers through his hair in frustration, his scalp feeling like it was on fire. "Listen, I found something and if I'm right you'll have matching errors in your records too. I need you to check for any sales slips to us that involve a vendor called Silver Runway Corp."

"Umm, Silver Runway, yeah got it," Carter mumbled, his voice still thick with sleep. "What am I looking for exactly?"

"Don't worry about that right now. I've faxed you some inventory control reports, you'll understand when you see them. I just need to know if the numbers correspond on your end. I also need to know if you have any additional contracts with this company and any tax filings you have from them."

Rick looked down yet again at the corresponding documents he had from the UN on this company as an approved dealer and vendor. They all looked legit, but it was all bogus. It was hardly forensic accounting but you did have to know what to look for. After letting Noah look over the numbers, it became clear this company was trafficking stolen inventory and arms and at least one person within both USAfriCOM and the UN was colluding with them.

"Don't discuss this with anyone," Rick warned.

"Captain, that goes without saying," He replied easily as if he weren't actually listening.

"Carter," Rick spoke slowly for emphasis. "Someone's been signing off on all these shipments. Here and in your shop. That means they've gotta be involved and they might know something about Michonne, so the temptation will be to go confront them. _Resist_."

Carter was such a narcissist that Rick knew he had to be explicit. The opportunity to grandstand would be difficult for him to ignore.

"We need to find them before whoever it is that took Michonne realizes we know anything. Okay?"

"Rick. I. Got. It," Carter said exasperatedly.

"Grab everything you can find and I'll meet you at your spot at one."

"Roger that," Carter said disconnecting the call.

Rick flipped his cell shut and sighed heavily. His chest was tight and his heart pounded until it ached. He placed a hand over the center of his chest and prayed he was too young for angina. But the pain was more than just physical. It had an emotion component that made his eyes burn, his head hurt as well. He'd left out a crucial part that he'd already discovered with Noah's help. But he couldn't bring himself to say the words to Carter, not yet. He needed to be absolutely certain before he could or would allow himself to believe it.

Rick could barely see through the watery haze filling his eyes as he looked down at the vendor documents they had on this company. Before him lay the certificate of insurance every company that dealt with the United Nations had to provide with their business filings. This company, Silver Runway, was fairly obviously a shell, if one knew what they were looking at, which most would not. This was a puzzle that only Rick held the pieces for. They had filed their letters of incorporation in Switzerland but what caught his eye was their corporate headquarters. They were located in Senoia, Georgia, a stone's throw from his hometown in King County. And its chief operating officer went by the name E. J. Hurd.

...Which only Rick would know was the maiden name of Elizabeth Jean Walsh, Shane's grandmother.


	40. Chapter 40

_7/28/15 02:37 CAT_

Medical Station Omicron, Rwanda

Michonne tried to ignore the incessant throbbing in her side, but as she adjusted her position painfully, it caused her to gasp.

"Are you alright?" Rick whispered in the dark from his place right beside her.

She nodded afraid to open her mouth and allow a moan to escape. She stared up into the darkness and listened to Rick's breathing to distract herself.

"Do you need me to press the button? The light is green." Rick quietly asked, referring to the PCA pump situated by her bed that delivered pain medication at intervals into her IV line. The bed shifted under his weight as he began to move. Michonne grabbed his forearm, lying delicately across her pelvis, and he stilled.

She raised her head and looked over Rick's body. The button from the machine glowed an enticingly bejeweled green color behind him just as he had said, but she tried to ignore it. She squeezed his arm, beseeching him silently.

"No," She answered quickly. "Just stay where you are."

They rested together, at ease and quiet, like longtime companions. Michonne knew it might have seemed very premature to an onlooker. The fact that Rick was already sharing her bed, albeit a narrow hospital bed, mere hours after their first declarations of love to one another. But it made perfect sense to them, having transcended those nascent phases of love and abiding respect for each other so long ago. Though they had never been this physically intimate before, save earlier that same day on the transport plane, emotionally this felt a very long time in coming.

"If you're in pain, we need to press the button." Rick's forehead rested against the side of her face on the pillow as he spoke.

After the groups' dinner ended that night, Rick had come down to visit her room as he'd promised he would. And without any prior discussion about it, she slid off to one side on the mattress to make room for him. He gently slipped onto the bed beside her and had remained there since, lying curled on his side while she lay flat on her back mindful of her surgical wound. Michonne knew that couldn't be a comfortable position to hold all night long but Rick hadn't moved. She knew he wouldn't but still refused to let the machine administer a fresh dose of pain medication. She knew taking the dose would leave her in a woozy haze for hours. And right now, she just wanted to stay in the moment, awake and alert with him, before he had to leave in the morning.

"I won't go while you're asleep," he reassured her yet again, knowingly.

"I know," she said easily but actually felt an odd relief.

"If you keep waiting, the pain will become unbearable and you'll need more medication just to get back to where you are right now," he warned. "Trust me. I've been shot twice and stabbed once. I've become an expert in effective pain management."

"What?" That meant someone had shot him since their time in the DRC. The thought of it was terrifying. Michonne turned toward him shocked by this admission, before she remembered her injury. This time, she couldn't stifle the cry of agony the sudden movement caused.

"I'm doing it. Are you going to let me?" He said firmly but there was still a plaintiveness to the statement. Like despite his words, he still wouldn't if she insisted.

Michonne couldn't deny the pain that radiated from her side and stole much of her breath away. It seemed so much worse than it had been only hours before when she woke up from surgery. She knew from earlier in the day on the plane that without something to take the edge off, this pain would soon block out everything else in her mind. Rick wasn't wrong about that. _She needed a distraction_.

"Make love to me," she requested boldly, breathless as she tried to manage the ache in her abdomen.

Rick chuckled low in his throat. Michonne could feel his breath on her shoulder as he smiled.

"What?" She asked trying not to be insulted that this was his first reaction to her request.

"I can barely touch you, let alone make love to you."

She sighed as deeply as the pain would allow, irritated that Rick was being so sensible and fell silent.

"I could be on top," She offered after a while. "You could be gentle."

She heard a small grunt in the darkness from Rick but without seeing his face she couldn't decipher its meaning.

"Well?" She prompted when her suggestion met with silence on his end.

"Michonne," He sighed. "I haven't had sex since before Judith was born. So no, no, I couldn't."

She was stunned to hear that. _Just how soon after Lori had sent her that letter that wrecked her world, had her own life with Rick fallen completely apart?_ Michonne wondered.

"Judith is only a little over a year old. That's hardly a dry spell. So what are you saying?" Michonne recognized she was being petulant. Any doctor would have said sex was either an extremely bad idea or a complete impossibility but irritably, she didn't care.

"I guess I should just be honest and say _with you_ , no, I couldn't," He clarified ominously.

The implication in his words silenced her for a moment.

"But maybe, if you let me push the button, then we could consider it," He coaxed, teasing her. She could hear the smile in his voice.

With effort, Michonne folded her arms across her chest. _Everything hurt now, Rick was right...but that wasn't the point_. "Sure, and then you'd basically be making love to a corpse. I didn't peg you for a necrophiliac, Captain," She retorted snarkily.

Rick brought forth with a full-bodied laugh that made the whole bed tremble beneath them before adding in an entirely serious voice right by her ear, "Maybe. But you have _no_ _idea_ what it is I like."

There was something dark and seductive about those words that her body responded to, even though they were said in jest. He propped himself up on one arm then to look down on her whole body intently. When she looked back, she could see how his eyes bore into her flesh, his blue eyes glittering like dark pearls in the minimal light.

Michonne felt his fingertip as it came up from his side. And she held her breath as he ran it down the center of her forehead, down the gentle dip and up the slope of her nose, before settling briefly on the cupid's bow above her top lip. His eyes flowed over her as his fingertips rested first on her bottom lip, then on the tip of her chin. She didn't move following it the length of her jawline to her ear before slipping down her neck, along her pulse points and across her clavicle.

" _Breathe_ ," He whispered huskily against her lips, his mouth hovering just at the corner of her own.

His fingers, feather-light, lingered near the hollow of her throat before sliding over her hospital gown down her chest plate between her breasts as if he were studying her form. It took a moment before she realized that she too followed the progress of his hand eagerly. She was acutely aware and intent on his touch, forgetting everything else, very nearly including her pain.

"Are you okay?" He asked then, his voice at a deeper timbre, right near her ear. The twang of his accent making the words run together.

She nodded before speaking the words "yes" on an exhale.

Rick's palm hovered, fingers splayed over her stomach, not touching her thin gown or bandages but close enough for her to feel its heat radiating above her navel. His hand then slipped beneath the thin sheet that covered her at the same time that he leaned forward and finally captured her mouth with his own.

Michonne gasped, feeling momentarily caught off guard despite asking for this.

She gripped his bicep in surprise, suddenly overwhelmed. His fingers eased past the soft barrier of her flimsy, hospital-issue, cotton panties as his tongue did the same between her lips, making her moan with pleasure instead of pain against his mouth. Her legs fell apart, with only a slight nudge of encouragement from him, granting him access to her core. He gently probed, while caressing her lovingly. After a few indulgent moments of delicate exploration, Rick's fingers quickened, nimbly stroking her. He worked intently coaxing, then pushing, then driving her to the brink and for a few deliciously decadent minutes he made her hover there, at the precipice of her climax.

Her impatient hand fell heavily over his then, guiding him as she made keening sounds against his lips. Her fingers intertwined with his instructing him in the ways that her pleasure was, like every woman's, unique in all the world. His mouth grew demanding, voracious, claiming her lips and tongue, sucking and nipping at her. He moved his lips to her jawbone and neck, ravishing her with kisses, claiming her with his obvious desire before returning to make love to her mouth yet again.

Rick groaned and she felt him harden against her hip as goosebumps and sweat-beads sprang up all over her flesh. She began to writhe and tingle under his hand. She felt over-stimulated as the pleasure grew in intensity, an all-consuming desire filling her. Desperate to possess him then as he did her, she clawed at his arm trying to pull him closer, trying to get him to cover her body with his. She wanted, then needed, to feel him inside her, the painful consequences be damned. She mewled needily as her nails dug into his shoulder but he kept her at bay, tortuously limiting her to only the attentions of his hand and mouth. Still, the two mirrored each other, both working in concert to elicit cries of ecstasy from her.

At last, she felt the warmth grow, beginning like an ember in her center and then spreading outward in ever-intensifying waves as the fire in her kindled. Her whole body tensed as she gradually crested and then broke on the initial tide of orgasm. She felt both the pleasure of his hands and mouth on her and the pain of her wound together, exquisitely linked, for one perfect moment. Soon, her whole body clenched, bow-string tight yet again, stronger than the first time, and she shattered, flying apart into a million glorious pieces. Yet Rick's skillful fingers continued to move, committed to wringing every ounce of rapture from her until she was thoroughly spent.

"My God!" She cried into Rick's mouth, trying to still his hand, seizing it in her own and squeezing her thighs shut around them both. But he and his hand persisted undeterred as she moaned. He lapped up her cries like nourishment, greedy for them.

The aftershocks rocked her body, sending tremors flying all the way down to her toes and up into her brain and out through her fingertips. For a few divine moments, she was no longer herself, no longer her body, no longer her pain. She felt like one giant firecracker that spun and sparkled and whirled and exploded, again and again, until it exhausted itself.

"Geezus H. Christ," She sighed finally as Rick eased away, slightly, his moist hand returning to her bare hip. He kneaded it along with a handful of her ass and she practically purred. He pushed her locs out of the way with his nose and nestled his head beneath her jaw at the same time. He kissed her neck lovingly as she panted, gulping down large mouthfuls of air, trying to catch her breath. Michonne's entire body was slick with sweat and languid with exhaustion. "What the hell did I ever do to you to deserve _that_?"

Rick chuckled into her throat, still ministering to it like his newest obsession. He kissed it softly, as she trembled, without answering, his stubble tickling her neck.

"How do you feel? Scale of one to ten." He finally asked long minutes of silence later.

"Ten being best, one worst? Twenty-eight." _It wasn't even a question_ , Michonne realized.

She felt Rick smile against her neck. "I meant _the pain_." He asked, giving her shoulder a quick nip grazing her with his teeth.

Michonne couldn't pretend the dull ache had disappeared but it was significantly decreased. "A five," She answered honestly. "But it was a negative three before."

"Good." He curled his big body around her, bringing his hand up to palm her breast through her paper-thin gown possessively and massaging her nipple with his thumb. Michonne moaned involuntarily. Her whole body felt like an exposed wire now. He could have touched her earlobe with his fingertip and she would have come again. They entwined their bodies as much as her injury would allow.

"That was a good idea of yours. The truth is endorphins _are_ endorphins. Whether you get them from the little green button over there or... otherwise. One thing though..."

He kissed the tip of her nose, then her neck and then her breast in rapid succession as if seeking to restart their last encounter, before returning to the underside of her jaw to bedevil her using only his mouth and tongue.

"What?" She asked laughing as his whiskers tickled the soft skin of her throat. She threaded her fingers through the curls at the nape of his neck absently as he worked. She could feel his smile again as he pulled back slightly and his lips hovered over her shoulder.

"Let's leave 'Jesus' out of it, okay?" Rick whispered, amused. "The guys decided to take shifts outside the door tonight and the last thing we need is Rovia busting in thinking he was being summoned."

* * *

 _04:41 CAT_

Despite her valiant effort, Michonne finally relented and allowed Rick to push the green button at 5am.

Rick had surprised himself by falling asleep. He'd been sleeping for two hours when he heard Michonne groan.

"'Chonne," He chastised her through a yawn. "Don't be a hero. Let me press the goddamn button."

"No," she said simply, parroting the exact same response she'd been giving him all night.

He lifted his wrist to his face and checked his watch, just barely making out the numbers. "Christ, how long have I been asleep?"

He was upset with himself. He didn't want her sitting up awake all by herself. Especially since there would be no way for her to reach her PCA pump with him asleep. It was on his side of the bed and too far away for her to reach.

"Do you need anything? Some water? Why didn't you wake me?"

"I wanted you to get some rest," she admitted. "I'm worried you haven't had that much."

She moved her head on the pillow to be near his shoulder.

He scoffed. "This is nothing. In the Corps, we'd go weeks on little to no sleep. It was just the way they tempered us. Turned us into soldiers. No sleep, no rest, little food, lots of work. This is kid stuff." He attempted to reassure her, leaving out the part about how that was nearly twenty years ago.

The truth was, Rick felt the fatigue down to his bones. His entire body felt heavy, his limbs cumbersome. Honestly, these few hours with Michonne were the closest he'd come to down time since well before this whole nightmare began. It felt like he hadn't gotten a good night's unencumbered sleep since... _he didn't even know exactly when_.

The last few months had been a whirlwind of reordering his life. Extricating it from the UN and from Lori's and from Georgia in its entirety. He hadn't discussed it with anyone but Rick had been in North Carolina on a third job interview with a private security firm based in Raleigh. It had been a job that would have paid him exorbitant sums, enough to keep him on top of his alimony, child support _and_ the mortgage payments for both the home Lori and the kids' lived in and his own place potentially.

He sighed in frustration.

For the first time in a long while things had begun to seem as if they were looking up. The trip to North Carolina was to involve the final handshakes on the new position and a real estate tour of some homes in Cary, Durham and the surrounds that would have given him enough room for when he had visitation with Carl and Judith. At last, after long months of uncertainty, things were starting to re-form from the ashes of the bomb he'd dropped on his entire family and life when he had asked Lori for the divorce.

Yet despite it all, there was this feeling, one he'd been unable to shake off, that all was not as it should have been. At night, he remained hounded by this unsettled feeling that something had been left undone, incomplete. It dogged him, even the night before everything fell apart. As he lay in his complimentary hotel room in the four-star hotel that the company had put him up in, the feeling would not let him go. But now like everything else in the world that he knew, it was gone. That incomplete feeling had vanished.

 _Should he have just been relieved_ , he wondered, instead of questioning it? Was he stupid to be stressing even that now? Wondering where his backbreaking stress went, wondering why he felt more ordered and at peace in a world gone crazy than he had as his life was finally coming together? Everything was insane. Those places, Raleigh, Atlanta, King County, were all gone. Carl and Judith were on a boat somewhere in the Atlantic, unaware of whether their father was alive or dead at this point. Michonne was just barely recuperating from their earlier misadventures. They were not significantly any closer to their objective than they had been two mornings earlier and a crazed, homicidal madman was playing either host or jailer to them. Yet, here he was, sleeping soundly. So how was it that though he hadn't been sleeping well back then, now, at Michonne's side, he slept like a baby?

"Rick, are you okay?" She asked of him breaking the silence with a mirror of his usual question for her. She was so perceptive, particularly where he was concerned.

"I am," He said easily, knowing he was actually, _finally_ telling the truth. "Really."

"I know," Michonne whispered.

"How?" _How could she know_? He wondered, though he believed her. He barely knew himself.

"Because I am too," She answered simply like it was the easiest question she'd ever been asked.

They kissed again, passionately, Michonne's soft hands cupping his face and holding him there. In that moment, Rick's chest felt tight and he swore his feelings for her were too much. Like, if he wasn't careful they would overwhelm him, like if he could he would climb into her skin and share it with her. This was one of those moments and it honestly scared him. He eased away from her a little shaken by the experience and the silence enveloped them again. But a few minutes later, Michonne hissed in pain that she tried to stifle.

"Can I—"

" _Fine_ , yes, you can press the fucking button," She finished his question for him as he chuckled.


	41. Chapter 41

May 8th 2011

Location Unknown, DRC

The eggs were cold and runny, Michonne pushed them around her plate, tempted to just eat them anyway. She knew she shouldn't take a plate full of good food for granted. In her mere three days in camp she'd noticed that the food quality dipped considerably when Ngangabouka wasn't around. The meals she had in her cell were gruel relative to the food she'd had in his presence and since. Her two previous mornings, they'd served her luke-warm cornmeal porridge for breakfast, today as she sat across from him, she had her choice of fresh fruit, fufu, eggs and salted fish, among other things.

That morning, she'd been awakened roughly by François. He nearly dragged her out of bed, complaining that she should have been up already. What he couldn't and didn't know was that she'd spent most of the night before playing cards with Fabian. As a result, she'd only had barely three hours of sleep when he barged in. After François' intrusion, she silently allowed herself to be dressed by Marion. Michonne found it strange and suspicious that Ngangabouka had his concubines waiting on her like handmaidens.

Unfortunately, without options to resist she was forced to just follow along. The mute woman put her in another dress, this time a pale, floral and A-lined thing, before pushing her out into the hall. She felt as if she was being prepared for a dance at a prison-school. She followed her guard down the hall into another part of the building, watching quietly. She was still determined to make heads or tails of the building layout that she was trapped inside.

François rapped on an office door once and it opened immediately, revealing a small suite. The room was split into a living room and small dining area. She imagined this was formerly the Warden's quarters. At a circular, polished-wood table, three men sat with Oné eating and talking companionably in a language Michonne didn't readily understand. They looked up from their plates and stopped as they saw Michonne and François enter. Oné got up quickly and came to her, dismissing François with a wave of the hand as if he were an annoying gnat. She placed her hands on Michonne's shoulders and turned her away from the group briefly.

"I don't know why he has you here. Say nothing. Do you understand?" She leaned into Michonne's ear and squeezed her shoulders harshly to emphasize her words.

Michonne simply nodded, already following the directive she'd been given. Her heart galloped at the urgency in Oné's tone. The older woman guided her to a seat and encouraged her to help herself to the various platters of food that covered the table. The men watched her appraisingly but said nothing. Michonne stole glances at them, trying to see if she could somehow make out who they were to Ngangabouka, based on appearance alone. Two were large, burly men, and all were well-fed in comparison to most of his group, from the looks of their bulging bellies. _Were they among Ngangabouka's retinue that she'd seen the night before? Were they lieutenants from the other compounds he ran elsewhere?_ It was frustrating. Like everything else, this was completely foreign to her and the necessity of her presence, a mystery.

One man spoke, looking at her but she couldn't understand. He spoke in one of the river languages, one of the dozens of dialects of the region. Rick had always been impressed with Michonne's facility with languages and she always had to remind him that she had nothing on the locals. Some of whom spoke numerous regional dialects as well as the official languages of their country.

As she placed various items on her plate, the man to her right asked a question of her. She could tell that much from the expectant way he waited for her response. A second man spoke then to him. Those words she recognized as Kinyarwanda, though she still didn't understand them to speak the language. Whatever was being said was clearly at her expense, but she kept to the instructions she was given, remaining silent. She turned back to the ripe papaya, mango and banana salad that sat in a bowl directly in front of her. As she reached for the bowl, the man closest to her placed his large hand heavily on hers. Michonne shook it free, disgusted, putting it her lap but still didn't say anything.

Oné spoke up suddenly, saying something to the men that caused them all to laugh, cutting the sudden tension that was forming. Michonne straightened in her chair and risked reaching for a platter again. She served herself, fuming as they looked and twittered amongst themselves. _If Ngangabouka had dressed her up thinking he was feeding her as a means to serve her up as dessert to these men, he was going to be sadly disappointed._

Michonne gripped her fork but wouldn't put it to her mouth. It was the only implement she had to use as a weapon if she needed it. She looked at Oné, who just shook her head almost imperceptibly. Oné watched as she gripped the fork tightly, recognizing the potential danger to everyone at the table. Then just as easily she addressed the man on her left, and they all erupted in fresh laughter.

"Marcel said relax, he just wanted you to know to beware of the seeds. Really, he's bragging about the passionfruit he brought that's in the fruit salad." Oné rolled her eyes, saying something else in Kinyarwanda to him even as she looked at Michonne.

She nodded at Oné trying still to follow her directions and eat as if she were alone at the table. Luckily, the attention focus changed moments later as Ngangabouka entered the room from what looked like a bedroom. He adjusted his belt as he entered. Behind him she saw the much smaller figure of Ariane, fixing the small scarf wrap on her head. The young woman saw Michonne at the same time and cast her eyes down.

Michonne turned her attention back to the food in front of her, but had largely lost her appetite. Her face burned with anger and the back of her eyes ached from holding back tears she refused to shed. The age of consent in this country was sixteen and Ariane was nearly eighteen but that didn't stop Michonne from finding it all reprehensible. She watched as they came and took the two empty chairs at the table. She looked down at the half full plate that sat before her and puzzled at not only her own presence there but Oné and Ariane's as well.

"Ms. Philippe, good morning!" Ngangbouka said genuinely chipper. "I always say nothing starts a day off better than good head!"

He unfurled his cloth napkin with a snap of his wrist and dropped it into his lap as Michonne scowled with revulsion. She looked across at Ariane, sitting next to him. The girl could barely look up to meet her gaze before her eyes flew back to her lap.

Ngangabouka caught the exchanged glance and scoffed. "I assure you, she _offered_."

Michonne looked around the table. Oné looked at her witheringly, as if Michonne had managed to disobey her even without speaking. The man seated next to Michonne, Marcel, watched them carefully but it was clear he didn't understand what was being said around him. The second man, who'd first spoken to her, looked the same, but the third, a more compact man, a full head shorter that everyone there —though just as wide— watched her with interest. He adjusted the wire-frame bifocal spectacles on his face and unlike earlier took a good look at her, which she returned boldly. She didn't know why yet but she had found the one person who looked vaguely familiar.

Michonne struggled to shovel the cold remnants of her breakfast into her mouth just in an effort to keep quiet. Preventing violence against women, sexual and otherwise, was Michonne's reason for being. To sit quietly as these, no doubt, major perpetrators of such violence sat around her comfortably enjoying their breakfast ran contrary to every instinct in her body, in her life.

Ngangabouka watched her closely seeming to see that as he prepared his plate of food. But then he just shrugged and took up a conversation in Kinyarwanda with the bespectacled man. He laughed while Oné smiled mildly translating the joke into yet another indecipherable language while Ariane continued to stare at her plate.

Michonne's heart broke for the girl. At a time in her own life when her major preoccupations had been being the co-captain of her varsity soccer team, choosing amongst college acceptances, and getting ready for prom, this young woman was having to deal with the sexual appetites of a grown man. Michonne found the very idea of it abhorrent.

*She doesn't like you.* The bespectacled man said observantly in Swahili to Ngangabouka. He gestured toward Michonne with his chin.

Again, all eyes slowly turned toward her as she in turn glowered at him.

*Not much, no.* Ngangabouka concurred seemingly unbothered, intent on his meal.

*Not at all.* She corrected, finally breaking her silence unable to keep quiet any longer.

Oné sucked her teeth out loud with irritation. Ariane looked up finally into Michonne's face. The bespectacled man smiled widely, pleased with her response clearly. The man called Marcel did too.

*Insolence!* The third declared which seemed to surprise even Ngangabouka.

Ngangabouka clapped his hands together and laughed heartily with delight. "Tell me how you really feel, Michonne," he said in English, using the corner of his napkin to dab his eyes once he finally stopped laughing.

*You would allow a woman to sit at your table and talk to you like this? To say anything she _wants_? I would not have it!* The third man continued scandalized.

 _This must have been why Oné told her to be quiet,_ Michonne surmised.

*Good thing we are at _my_ table and not yours, eh?* Ngangabouka said as the smiles and ease of a moment before vanished. *And I'd say she's not the only person who is lucky I let them speak freely at my table.*

Oné looked from her son-in-law to Michonne in shock. Suddenly, a shadow fell over her face, hardening her expression, quickly making it unreadable. The men grew silent as well, ironically in direct opposition to what Ngangabouka had just said. Even Ariane's eyes fastened onto Michonne's face. She couldn't decipher the young girl's emotions but her eyes searched Michonne's.

*Of course, excuse me.* The man said contritely. Michonne could tell it took a toll on his pride to appear that cowed.

*Enough nonsense.* Ngangabouka said decisively before switching back to the tongue she didn't speak and shutting her out of the conversation entirely.

Michonne looked again at the two women sitting with her and discovered they were both examining her with entirely new eyes. She didn't know what had just happened, but it was clear she'd passed Ngangabouka's test but failed the others'.

* * *

By afternoon, like it heralded his arrival, a great deal of excitement preceded Ngangabouka's departure. Apparently, his time at this outpost was concluded. Michonne hadn't flattered herself that he'd come entirely on her account but now she realized that clearly the earlier meeting had been his true motivation. And it provided her with a surprisingly clear idea of where she was and the purpose of this camp. Yet another piece of the puzzle of her location had been answered. Now, if a window of opportunity to escape presented itself, she not only had a means to do it but she now had a vague idea where she would be running from and to. As a result she was in a remarkably good mood when she was summoned to him again, Francois roughly urging her out of her room to attend him at the front on the building. As the guard pushed her out the large front door, she found that the courtyard was filled with the frenetic buzz of scores of people.

In what Michonne considered an incredible display of hubris, Ngangabouka apparently required the entire camp to attend his departure. The one unforeseen benefit was it allowed Michonne a look at all the camp residents. The group, numbering roughly thirty when his traveling group of over twenty were subtracted, fell into two reviewing lines that stretched from very near the door of the administration building to the front gate. Oné was stationed near the building staff like a governess. All the cooks, housekeepers, guards, Marion and Ariane were near her. When it appeared that he was coming, the entire host fell to their knees, heads bowed. But unlike the rest of the group, Michonne noticed his "women" did not kneel. And since she was certain it would be a frigid day in hell before she kneeled before anyone, Michonne didn't either, despite Ariane's gentle urging.

She watched as Ngangabouka finally emerged from the building, speaking with Dwight, who walked at his side. Seeing them coming, the entire line grew quiet from the faint whispering they had been doing. He paused for a moment right outside the doorway, ready to inspect the group. Then just as he neared her, Michonne felt a sharp pain at the back of her knee that caused it to buckle. She staggered forward a step trying to catch herself, which propelled her directly into his path. She reflexively flailed and he caught her by her forearms.

"Why Michonne, I had no idea you were so sad to see me go," Ngangabouka said playfully as she pulled herself out of his arms as if they burned her flesh. She looked behind her at the two women she stood between. Ariane and Marion both looked back wide-eyed in shock and apparent innocence. "To throw yourself at my feet already, I'm honored."

Ngangabouka snickered at her obvious irritation. "Would you like to come with me?"

She stepped back trying to regain her space between the two women and a bit of her dignity.

"Absolutely not," She snapped with scorn and without a moment's hesitation.

There was a flash of annoyance in his face that was replaced quickly by something else. "Well, that settles it then." He reached out and snatched her by the arm, pulling her back off the receiving line and to his side.

"Oné, Marion, come."

The two women, both with hands demurely clasped in front of them and looking solemn, obediently stepped off the line and in nearly synchronized fashion, fell behind him in his departing retinue. Ariane looked at them all panicked as if she were being abandoned. As they walked away, Michonne turned to see Marion place a brief comforting hand on Ariane's face, before continuing on. Ngangabouka's large hand held Michonne by the wrist firmly, dragging her along with surprising strength and ease. This was actually the first time Michonne had been this close to him. He was a large and imposing man but this was the first moment Michonne appreciated fully how strong he also was. It felt distinctly like he could wrench her arm out of its socket if she resisted. Still, it didn't stop her from trying to pull her arm out of his. Not that he seemed to notice her actions at all.

*...Marcel will be getting them next week.* Ngangabouka instructed Dwight in French as they walked along, completely undeterred as if Michonne wasn't struggling to free herself at his side. Oné put a calming hand on her shoulder that she shrugged off quickly.

*When that shipment comes in, you take the usual amount but then I want you to send the excess to Shangho. He can call it a peace offering or whatever he likes. Oné, you will handle that inventory. Now with that POS out of the way, I do not expect a repeat of the last time.* He turned to Oné then and she looked contrite.

Michonne planted herself and made her body as boneless and heavy as she could, preparing to be dragged across the dirt courtyard in the pretty white dress, if necessary. She'd seen her cousin Marsha's small daughter Aisha do that once and it had been like the five year old turned into an immovable boulder. Ngangabouka felt the change in resistance and stopped.

"Really?" He said in English, amused again.

"I am not going with you," Michonne said forcefully, though knowing in reality she had absolutely no say in the matter.

"Is that so?" He broke into another of his vicious smiles. He yanked her arm so hard, she wondered if he did in fact dislocate her shoulder. He brought her close so he could whisper in her ear. Michonne's heart thudded in her breast as he leaned into her. "I must be doing a really terrible job of things if you _actually_ think you'd have a choice. Get with the program, Ms. Philippe. I've been on my very best behavior with you since you've been here, I _suggest_ you don't get on my bad side."

Michonne glared at him and knew she risked her life in the process. Between gritted teeth, she acquiesced, "Let me go, I can walk."

She looked around and saw that the entire group was riveted by the exchange though only a select few actually understood what was being said. Many dared to raise their heads and peek to see what was going on. He released her easily, as if she'd said the magic words.

"You're a quickstudy. I like that about you." He winked at her. *Come, let me show you something.*

He spoke loudly in French so that everyone understood they were proceeding although he was clearly speaking to her alone. Michonne noticed, eyes returned to the dirt and people remained genuflect. He led Michonne and the group behind them to the mouth of the compound. The gate to the great chain link perimeter fence that separated Michonne from her freedom was cast open. It took everything in her not to make a run for the tree line less that 50 feet ahead of her. It would've been so easy to flee and to get lost in the copse of trees and thick foliage that surrounded them. But to do that she'd actually have to make it there. The number of guns between her and that made it not just a fantasy but a suicide mission.

Michonne walked confidently with him to the gate confused about what exactly she was supposed to be seeing. She almost said as much until she noticed all eyes around her were trained overhead. Michonne turned around, following their gazes, and looked up. She gasped and fell back into Dwight in her panic. He held her still by the shoulders roughly. When she tried to look away from the horror, he grabbed her chin and held her head up to see it. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment gathering herself. Strung up by his wrists, bloodied and eviscerated was the first man at their breakfast table that morning. He hung from what must have previously been a flagpole, nearly halfway to the top though his entrails spilled from his body and touched the ground

In the end, Ngangabouka was correct. For a brief moment, she supposed, she _had_ forgotten precisely what he was capable of. Michonne took a deep breath and then opened her eyes to look again. She knew he was watching her, gauging her reaction, making a judgement about her strength based on this...and she'd already lost a little ground. She wouldn't lose more. Taking a whole minute to inspect his ravaged body, a man she'd broken bread with mere hours ago, she sighed. She looked at his already bloated and bloodied face and the flies that had begun swarming about it in the hot sun. She took note of his open eyes and shocked expression, the way strangulation had made his tongue poke out from between his lips and turn blue-black. It was a horror, but she wouldn't look away. This was the cost of respect in this awful place and she intended to pay it. Pushing her breakfast, that desperately wanted to make a return trip, back down, she turned her eyes toward Ngangabouka. Regardless of how she truly felt, she made her face both unimpressed and unmoved. It took all the fortitude she had to muster to maintain a façade of indifference.

*Let her go.* Ngangabouka instructed his man.

Dwight released her but not before hissing in her ear with menace. She deliberately stepped down as hard as she could on his booted foot as she pulled away from him. His cry of pain nearly made her smile with satisfaction.

*I thought you'd be pleased?* Ngangabouka asked but she could tell by the smirk that played on his mouth that he knew she was sickened and it delighted him. *That bastard wanted me to beat you for talking back. I'd imagine he'd have wanted you flogged for your behavior a minute ago.*

Michonne's eyes narrowed. She didn't understand the game Ngangabouka was playing but she knew she didn't want to be a party to it. *Even if that's the case, I don't believe for _one second_ you did that for me.*

She gestured with nod of the head toward the body hanging less than 20 feet from her, swinging in the heat as if it were the overripe fruit from a tree.

He laughed again, rocking on his heels. He clearly got a lot more out of their interactions than Michonne did. *Is that so?*

*If I were going to guess, he and his men were disrupting some of your supply lines? And this is the punishment for that.* Michonne said.

Ngangabouka crossed his arms refusing to indicate whether she was correct or not but Michonne knew she'd struck true with her first blow when his nostrils flared. He glared at Oné, as if she'd been the one to reveal something.

As if in confirmation, Oné rebutted harshly, *Quiet girl, no one cares what you think.*

Ngangabouka and Michonne stared at each other as if no one else had spoken.

*No, no, enlighten me.* He challenged. *You seem to think you know something.*

Michonne faltered suddenly realizing that knowing things she shouldn't was hardly great for her life expectancy. Just her presence here was proof of that.

"I give you my word of honor, my plans for you aren't going to change one way or another based on whatever it is you _think_ you know." He intoned cannily in English just for her and the few others who could understand, while crossing his heart.

Michonne still hesitated. This whole conversation had been ill-conceived. She wanted to show him he didn't scare her, but the truth was he did. And that fear had made her angry. And that anger had made her do something stupid. Sometimes, her urge to be taken seriously outweighed her common sense. Her grandmother had always warned her about that. Being a know-it-all was not always good for her health.

"Cough it up, Ms. Philippe. What exactly do you _think_ you know?"

Michonne's only saving grace was that more than any other emotion, Ngangabouka looked amused. As if he'd just discovered his favorite toy could talk.

*It has something to do with getting things to and from Southern Uganda, maybe?* Michonne raised her voice and deliberately spoke in French, hoping that anything she revealed from now on would be public knowledge and nothing for her specifically to lose her head over.

Ngangabouka smiled, seeming to catch that. *And?*

*And your man Marcel had hoped you could broker some sort of agreement with him,* She again gestured vaguely toward the body to indicate who she was talking about. *Hoping to free up the supply lines into Northern Rwanda, but you both badly misjudged this guy. Being offered a seat at the table with the likes of you and Alex Matembe made him—*

She looked at Ngangabouka expectantly prompting him.

*Oh, his name was Hector.* He said when he caught on.

*It made _Hector_ think he had greater stature than he did and unfortunately, more leverage than he did, which probably made him more belligerent, which...led to this.*

Michonne placed her hand on her hip and waited. She'd been wildly spitballing based on the scraps of information she'd gleaned. But years of listening carefully and putting the pieces together quickly and quietly, had made her a master of observing body language and context, even in languages she didn't actually understand. There were times, eerily like now, when that skill had had the potential to save lives, including her own.

Watching the slightly contentious conversation the men had, primarily in Kinyarwanda, a language they speak primarily in along the borders of Southeastern Uganda and Rwanda, helped her to understand the power dynamic. Then the yellow passionfruit in the fruit salad that Marcel brought his boss as a gift, which grows locally only in Rwanda's slightly acidic topsoil— A factoid Michonne managed to know only because of her tendency to quiz her greengrocer back in Kisangani—had told her more. And when the bespectacled man revealed his obvious comprehension of English, it seemed to suggest he was either well-educated, Ugandan or both.

So when Ngangabouka himself had called the man 'Shangho', her suspicion was confirmed. He was indeed Ugandan. In fact, he was most likely the infamously corrupt, permanent parliamentarian from Uganda, Alexander 'Shangho' Matembe. The regional newspapers were filled with his pictures and exploits. While his country struggled through civil war, he enriched himself and his cronies in office, declaring himself a Trade Minister-for-Life. Michonne had witnessed for herself UN officials at the Ugandan refugee camp dealing with his proxies who came around looking for kickbacks on supply deliveries. Still, never in her wildest imaginings did she think she would ever meet the man face to face.

Ngangabouka clicked his tongue and shook his head at her. "Huh."

A part of her wanted to know how close she'd gotten. She wanted the satisfaction of knowing, but just one glance at Oné and Dwight told her, it was close enough. She and Ngangabouka stood facing each other. It felt like no one moved until their staring contest ended. A faint breeze floating by her carried the fetid scent of rapid decay. A wave of nausea hit her that forced her to gag suddenly and her eyes watered from the smell. She put fingers to her lips to hold back her breakfast once again, making her the loser of their battle of wills.

"Need to put your head between your legs?" He asked in a faux show of concern. "Need me to?"

Michonne rolled her eyes at his archness. "I just want to be allowed to go back to my room."

She couldn't believe she was asking that. _Since when did she have a room?_

Ngangabouka looked surprised as well. "You still could just come with me? Better than being cooped up in that little room. And you never know what could happen between us." He waggled his eyebrows in a way that might have been endearing or amusing had he not been her captor and a brutal psychopath.

"Not even if you were _the_ last man, on my last day on earth," Michonne responded truthfully.

Ngangabouka laughed uproariously at that until he coughed and tears sprang to his eyes. "God, I'm gonna fuckin' miss having you around. Walsh doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about."

Michonne looked at him curiously, unsure of what to make of that statement. Shocked to hear Shane's name in his mouth, brought up so casually. There was no way for her to further deny that she owed her current predicament to Shane. Ngangabouka stepped away from her then as if their playtime was over, moving back to directing his men. Oné stepped between them pushing her away and back toward the entrance of the encampment. François came out of seemingly nowhere to nudge her the rest of the way back within the gates, lest she get caught up in the bustle and manage to escape. She watched the flurry of activity as Ngangabouka's men loaded things into some of the vans and trucks that had been inside the compound. Oné oversaw that enterprise with Ngangabouka as he sat waiting in the open doorway on the passenger seat of the lead truck. Michonne realized, looking around as she walked that they had all parked within the compound to avoid drawing attention to the gates, which from the outside, were all covered in the green fatigue colored camouflage to blend in with the jungle around them.

 _No one was ever going to find her here._

As François pushed her back inside, Michonne noted that amongst all that activity, no one had made a move to take Hector down from where he swung. It was a chilling reminder of what became of people who got in Ngangabouka's way.

 _Exactly as he no doubt intended_.


	42. Chapter 42

_7/28/15 07:12 CAT_

Medical Station Omicron, Rwanda

Rick held Michonne in his arms as they slept for another two hours. Around seven, there was a gentle knock at the door. Rick looked down at Michonne, her head cradled in the junction between his shoulder and his bicep. He flexed his arm and fist gently, tingling numb under her. She was out cold, as she had fretted she would be, her willpower no match for the strength of the Dilaudid coursing through her system.

"Captain?" PFC. Rhee's head came into view around the door as Rick craned his head to see who was coming in behind him. He put a finger to his lips.

"Captain?" Glenn whispered again in response. "LT told me to tell you wheels up at oh-eight thirty."

"Okay, we ready?" Rick asked easing himself out from around Michonne. He stood, shaking out his rumpled clothes and raking his fingers through his hair.

Glenn nodded. "Sgt. Williams and Sgt. Espinosa are less than pleased at being left behind though. I know Ms. Philippe is too."

Rick could see a grin forming on Rhee's face. "How about you?"

The smile fell from the private's lips. "These are the orders you've given me, Sir."

"I didn't ask you that. I asked how you felt about me taking L. Cpl. Dixon and Mr. Rovia instead of you."

The Private fumbled for a moment unprepared for the question, clearly trying to frame an adequate answer.

"It's just..." Glenn hesitated, clearly searching for the words.

"Spit it out."

"Permission to speak freely, Sir?" PFC. Rhee asked cautiously, growing serious.

Rick nodded, curious to why the young man was so outwardly amenable to an arrangement most of the others were balking at. Rick had watched Glenn enough to know it couldn't be cowardice or the relative appeal of steel and cinder block walls and the two hundred or so feet of dirt and concrete between him and the creatures outside. Private First Class Glenn Rhee had been the definition of 'courage under fire' since Rick met him three days earlier.

 _Yes, Rick's curiosity was piqued._

"Well," Glenn started reticently. "I understand what's going on out there. I know that we need you and the team to be 100 percent. There's no room for error, not now. There's too much riding on the outcome. And, um, no offense Sir, but you can't do it if you're preoccupied with Ms. Philippe's safety. So the thing is, I know that if my job is to make sure she's safe so that you can do your job effectively, then I know my job is just as important as yours is. Maybe more even."

Rick looked at Glenn stone-faced as the young man reddened. He allowed him to stew in that tiny bit of impertinence for a minute, like a good commanding officer should, before responding with a brief nod. "Well considered, and very true. Thank you, PFC Rhee...for seeing the big picture."

Glenn exhaled openly. He saluted Rick, but instead of ignoring it as he usually did, Rick returned his salute, dismissing him.

"Tell them I'll be up in thirty."

Rick turned back to the bed after Glenn's exit to see Michonne's eyes open. She stared at the ceiling. Her hand covered her forehead rubbing her temples but he saw a tear slip from the corner of her eye back into her hair as she lay recumbent and absolutely still on the bed.

"'Chonne?" He came up to the end of the bed. The PCA pump light was still red. There would be no button to alleviate the pain for a few hours more.

"I'm fine," she said, her voice cracking.

He looked at her, putting his hands on his hips.

"It's the medication making me emotional."

"Michonne," He said again more forcefully.

She moved her hand and looked up at him. "Is that true? What Glenn said?"

 _Only Michonne would be upset by knowing how obvious it was to everyone else that he loved her desperately._

"Can you not do your job because you're worried about me?" More tears slipped down her face, more than he thought he'd ever seen from her before. _This idea was really upsetting her. He didn't get it._

"It's not that I couldn't do my job. It's that my focus would be divided. I would be worried about you too. Concerned that everything was okay here."

"You think I can't take care of myself?" She asked defensively, clearly hurt.

"I know you can take care of yourself. You forget _I know_ what you're capable of."

Her expression darkened at that reference to long ago.

"Well, then?"

"Well then, what? Knowing that wouldn't stop me from being worried. Anything could happen, I just need to know that besides you and your, granted, very formidable skill-set there are also other people here invested in your well-being. That's all."

Michonne pushed her locs back from her face with both hands as she contemplated his response. "I can take care of myself, Rick. I've been doing it since I was twelve years old. For your information, my life didn't start on the day you and I met!"

"Well, mine did!" He retorted quickly, before he had a chance to weigh his words.

For a time, Michonne didn't speak and he didn't either. The truth of his words hung between them as ponderous and inordinate as a gigantic tree suddenly springing to life in front of them.

"I broke off my engagement to Michael after I got Lori's letter," Michonne admitted suddenly.

Rick was quiet, still in the moment of his revelation, which he knew was true the moment he said it. Then he looked at her, trying to fit her statement into what he'd just confessed. "Huh?"

"I didn't tell you everything last night and the rest of it's important," she sighed. "I came back to Atlanta after the DRC just trying to put my life back together. I spent a long time blaming myself for Maggie's death and Carter's death and S—"

"It's not your fault. People die, 'Chonne."

"No, no, but sometimes...sometimes, like it was then, it is." She covered her face with her arms for a moment like she couldn't bear his eyes on her and Rick watched as her body was wracked with silent sobs. He longed to reach for her but knew better.

After a moment, she composed herself and dropped her arms, continuing. "I came back and tried to rebuild myself. Pretend none of that had happened. I stopped speaking with you. I didn't speak with Hershel, cut him off. I couldn't look him in the eye. I didn't even go to Maggie's funeral, I just couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't go and try to explain to Beth how I let that happen. I just wanted to be someone else, the person I was before I went to the DRC, before the UN even. I tried to live the life I was 'supposed' to. And then one day after I'd been back about a year, Mike and I ran into each other, randomly. It seemed like fate. Like this _was_ what I was supposed to be doing. Picking it all up where I'd left off."

Rick wasn't sure he wanted to hear the rest of this story, even though he thought he knew how it ended.

"It was good for a while. He proposed, and even though I felt something... _or really nothing I guess_ , I still said yes. It was wrong of me I suppose, but I thought I was doing the right thing. But then fucking Lori." Michonne balled up her fist and slammed it on the bed beside her.

Rick was inexplicably surprised by Michonne's adamance. _Fucking Lori, indeed. Apparently, his ex-wife had saved not only his children's lives but his love life as well._ He almost laughed at the irony, but thought better of it.

"She sent that letter and honestly, I was so pissed at her."

Rick had known Michonne wasn't as nonchalant and pragmatic about it as she had portrayed herself to be last night. But still this was a surprise. He felt like his annoyance with Lori was suddenly vindicated.

"'How dare she?' You know? Make that accusation, and like it was a foregone conclusion? That you had cheated on her with me. As if I'd have let you!"

"She clearly didn't know who you were," Rick said, trying to keep the amusement out of his voice.

"She didn't!" Michonne concurred, oblivious. "I wouldn't have touched you with a ten-foot pole as long as you had that wedding ring on your finger."

Rick bit his lip to keep a straight face.

"But, but," She began as if she was going to amend her previous statement. "The fact that she could write that meant, it wasn't my imagination. It wasn't just my secret fantasy or something. There had been something there between you and me. Between the _both_ of us. Something that even your wife saw. God, I'm so sorry."

Rick came up to the side of the bed then and took Michonne's hand in his. He shook his head. Lori could and did blame him, but Michonne was blameless. He wouldn't have her thinking otherwise. "You have nothing to apologize for."

"I'm not apologizing to you...or her. I'm sorry I got Mike involved in all that. After I got the letter, I couldn't think about anything else. Soon, I realized I just couldn't marry him if I still felt this way about you. If I still felt this strongly for you. So I broke off the engagement. But by then, I had a dress, we'd booked a venue, the invitations had already gone out. It was...a mess."

She looked down at her hand and he did the same. Barely, now that he knew what he was looking at, he could see the faint outline of her engagement ring, a shade lighter than the rest of her finger. _This was a recent thing._

It was instantly sobering how close he'd come to losing her.

"How I feel about you, Rick, it's not normal. It's not the way I've felt about anyone else," she said shaking her head.

"I know." He sighed, echoing her sentiment. "It's different."

"Don't let it get you killed out there." Michonne said in nearly a whisper. A single tear rolled down her cheek that she brushed away roughly.

 _Ahh,_ he thought, finally getting where the tears were coming from _._

"You know, there hasn't been a moment since we left the Ticonderoga that I haven't thought about Carl and Judith? About where they are, what they're doing, if they're okay. But I know they're in good hands, so the thought of them doesn't make me weak, Michonne. It gives me focus. It gives me a reason to be going through all this. It's something to come back to. It's all that matters to me now, them and you. That's it."

He bent forward and kissed her forehead. "I have to go shower and get ready," he said into her hairline.

Gently, she placed a hand to his cheek and tipped up her head, guiding him to her mouth. They kissed each other with all the passion and longing of the years they'd spent apart unnecessarily. As they broke apart, he leaned his forehead against hers and her eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks.

"If this all goes well, I'll be back by this time tomorrow. Maybe with something that could make a difference. Something that will give us a real chance."

"When's the last time all went well?" She remarked drily.

"You trust me right?" He asked her again.

"It's not about me trusting you, Rick."

"It is. Because even if I have to drag my dead body across the Sahara and walk the desiccated carcass back to you, I'll do it. You believe that, right?"

"Not funny."

"It wasn't meant to be. It's just a fact." He kissed her lips again, once, quickly, hoping that would sate him until he saw her again.

"I'll be back," he said.

She looked at him blankly.

" _The Terminator_?"

"I know. And you explaining that makes it even less funny."

"But still true," he called behind him as he entered her private bathroom and started the water for a shower.


	43. Chapter 43

May 9th 2011

Kisangani, DRC

Rick went straight back to the office. It was six-thirty in the morning, so the place was completely deserted. But there was no sense in waiting anywhere else for him. In the quiet of the morning, in the cavernous office, Rick was left to the torture of his thoughts. He riffled through Shane's nearly empty desk, looking at his peppermint candy and folder of local menus. He flipped through the old phone book, covered in Shane's ridiculous doodles and grew melancholy for his friendship.

 _He'd known this man his whole life and there was no part of him that could honestly believe Shane was a willing party to this, particularly whatever happened to Michonne._

Rick fumbled with the phone repeatedly struggling with the desire to call Lori, desperate to have someone he could digest this new information with. But at seven in the morning, he knew that meant it was midnight at home. There was work and school in the morning. Neither Lori nor Carl deserved to have this call that late disturbing their sleep. Lori certainly didn't need to have her world shattered and then be expected to go to work at the library the next day as if nothing had occurred.

In any event, the simple truth of it was the one person who would really understand what he was going through, the number one person he most wanted to talk to, was the one person he couldn't reach. And ironically, that was the fault of the person who ran a very close second. So as six turned into seven and then into eight, Rick stewed more and more in his anger silently. By that time, he realized a confrontation was brewing, and it was preferable to have it outside of their office. Rick was truly worried about his own wrath. As a precaution, he left his gun locked in his desk before he left.

"Rick. Anything?" They were the first anxious words out of Maggie's mouth when she opened her door and found Rick standing on the other side. She almost didn't look surprised to see him.

He shook his head grimly, walking in as she stepped aside to let him.

"You?"

She did the same. "Rick, I don't think she even made it home that night."

He pulled her into a comforting embrace briefly. He rubbed her arm soothingly.

"I don't either," He admitted, his anger spiking for the millionth time that morning. "Shane here?"

Rick looked past her farther into the apartment. He would have preferred to do this without an audience. He'd even stopped by his place before heading to Maggie's on the off-chance Shane might have gone home for the last of his shit. _He hadn't._

Maggie nodded, stepping back from Rick as if she could read his thoughts. "Is everything okay?"

He wasn't certain what he wanted to do, but he was still sure he didn't want to do it in front of her. But she had a right to know what he'd discovered, just as he'd have wanted to know if situations had been reversed. She had the right to know the type of person she'd pledged her life to. Yet, he hesitated, struggling to smile and then lied.

"Yeah, I just needed to bend Shane's ear for a minute before we get into the office. Work stuff, thangs."

"Well then, it's a good thing you got here now. You just caught us. We were headed that way."

"Why don't you take off, darlin'. We'll catch up with you," Shane said coming from the back of the apartment where the bedroom was. He pulled a shirt over his head as he approached. Suspicion was etched in his face, looking Rick over carefully.

Rick did likewise stepping away from Maggie as if preparing for a stand-off.

She looked at them both, her large eyes narrowing, clearly trying to figure out what was happening. Rick looked at her again, touching her shoulder reassuringly.

"We'll see you in the office," He said easily. He managed a better approximation of a smile that time.

Maggie looked at Shane. "We'll be ten, fifteen minutes behind you," Her fiance insisted.

She nodded.

Maggie grabbed her pocketbook and a binder of papers off her small dining table. She walked back to Shane speaking so low Rick couldn't catch it, before she moved past him and out the front door.

The two men glared at each other from opposite sides of the room.

"A little early for a house call, no?"

"You couldn't have thought I wouldn't figure it out."

They spoke over each other.

"I don't know what you mean by that," Shane said calmly, evasively while Rick wanted to leap the sofa between them and snatch him up by the collar.

"What are you doing, man? She's our friend."

"She's _your_ friend," Shane corrected him sharply, revealing a flash of anger.

"What did you just say?" Rick took a step forward.

Rick didn't know who this person was standing in front of him.

Shane threw his hands up in surrender and broke into a oily grin. "Brother, listen, it's eight in the morning. I haven't had my coffee yet. What are we even talking about? I mean, really?"

Despite what it seemed he'd just revealed, Rick still wanted to give his best friend the benefit of the doubt.

" _Silver Runway_? E.J. Hurd? That's you, right?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Shane said again with perfect calm as Rick felt like he was about to erupt. The fury of betrayal built, filling in all the places in him devoid of rational thought. His fingers tightened around the Silver Runway file he'd brought with him. The folder of papers bent in his hands.

"DO NOT FUCKING PLAY GAMES WITH ME, MAN!" Rick exploded suddenly.

Shane's eyes widened. Of the two of them, Rick was definitely the more level-headed. He'd blown up at Shane like that perhaps once or twice in his entire adult life. That just wasn't Rick's way.

"Brother—"

"No, _no_ ," Rick shook his head looking toward Shane's feet because he couldn't bear to see his face in that moment. "Answer the goddamned question. Silver Runway of Senoia GA. That _is_ you, _right_?"

"I've never—" Shane started.

Rick saw red. He flipped the file across the room. The papers fluttered through the air between them as the folder they'd been in struck Shane in the forearm he'd brought up defensively to protect his face.

"Bullshit! Silver Runway, as in the Silver Run creek that runs behind your house? E.J. Hurd? Gramma Jean? I can't believe you'd bring _her_ into this? How did you possibly think someone wouldn't figure it out? That I wouldn't?" Rick stepped around the couch, yet somehow he and Shane remained the same distance apart. He looked down at their feet momentarily confused by that.

 _He'd stepped back_ , Rick realized shocked with himself. Shocked at the possibility he'd scared Shane.

"Rick, listen—"

"Answer me! What did you think would happen? Did you think you'd get away with this? That I wouldn't find out? How did you even get mixed up in it? Why?" Despite his anger, Rick really hoped there was a plausible explanation. He pinched the bridge of his nose trying to calm himself.

Shane hung his head for a moment, defeated. It was as good as an admission. He muttered to himself, too quiet for Rick to understand.

"What?" Rick demanded.

"I needed the money! For the Grand Dame, man," He said using his unusual pet name for his grandmother. "That place she was in, the assisted living place she moved to, right? It's like, twice as expensive as any other place. But if you'd seen these other places, man... I couldn't put her in one of those, I couldn't do that. Not to her. Not after everything."

In King County, the Walsh family had become somewhat famous for their misfortune. They had begun the previous century as one of the more numerous and prosperous families in the area but by the end of the Depression and then WWII, they'd lost most of their male line. Later, Shane's own parents died when he was a small child. By the time the Grimes family arrived in the area, Shane and his grandma Jean were the only Walshes left in King County that didn't reside in a prison or a graveyard.

"You could have asked Lori and me!" Rick said though he knew Shane would rather cut off his arm than do something like that. "Or you could have just sold the house."

"Then I might as well just kill her my-fuckin'-self! She'd die if I sold that place."

Rick knew for a fact that was true. Despite its dilapidated appearance the old victorian home Shane had grown up in was prized, of considerable value and a point of pride for the old woman. The Walsh family homestead for multiple generations, she'd cared for it to the best of her abilities until she'd grown too old to continue. Old Mrs. Walsh had remortgaged it to the hilt to finance not only Shane's college career but those of distant cousins that would never repay her and then later she had her accounts emptied by charlatans that preyed on trusting old women. As a result, Shane had been paying for his grandmother's folly for many years at this point. But Rick knew, if Shane had his way, he'd keep paying for it until the old woman died.

 _In some ways it all made sense, but…_

"They're weapons and equipment, Shane! You're providing material support and comfort to a known terrorist group," Rick said citing legal statute, shocked at himself for being taken in by Shane's rationale for even a moment. "...you are stealing and selling to a warlord! A tyrant, oppressing the people he claims to be defending."

"C'mon, Rick, you know one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

Rick was convinced that even as he said it Shane couldn't actually believe what he was saying.

"Don't give me that bullshit, man. You don't believe that—"

"I do! Just because it's not a palatable thought to you and the idiots in the UN, doesn't mean M23, the Saviors, didn't help bring Rwanda back from Civil War. The ends justify the means. Don't pretend you don't believe it too. We work for the United Nations as a peacekeeping force, but we carry guns, don't we? And to defend someone's life we'll take a life if we have to, right? Do you know how many people the United States has killed in the name of defending _our_ way of life?" Shane was animated, his hands moving wildly.

 _He was passionate about this_ , Rick said with a dawning realization.

"I mean right here, right in the DRC, to _these_ people man, we helped Sese Seko Mbutu kill Lumumba, their _democratically_ _elected president_ , to install a dictatorship, to place into power a brutal man but one who would be sympathetic to American concerns and interests."

"Aw, man. Fuck that! You aren't gonna drag me into that briar patch with you! You're talking about shit that happened during the _Kennedy_ administration? Lumumba was forty-fucking-years ago! And the genocide was almost twenty. That bastard can't dine out on this shit for the rest of his life! And you can't use that to justify his present actions...or yours! What has Negan and his kind done for these people since the war besides prey on them, huh? Just like every other dictator before him? The man is guilty of committing war crimes, for God's sake!"

Rick couldn't believe they were having this debate for the umpteenth time since they arrived in this country. He'd always thought Shane was just playing Devil's Advocate. He never truly bought that Shane believed, but apparently he did... or at least he did in as far as it allowed him to justify making a buck.

"And what does any of this have to do with Michonne, huh?"

"I don't know." Shane shrugged, shaking his head and avoiding Rick's eyes. "You're the one who's decided she's disappeared. I don't think we know that at all..."

"Don't do it, Walsh. Do _not_ do it." Rick shook his head slowly looking down at the ground to gather himself, marshal his fury. "Not with me."

Shane had apparently forgotten that Rick had known him since they were two kids joyriding in their principal's stolen car. He knew when Shane was lying he couldn't maintain eye contact. Rick realized suddenly that that was where all the nagging uneasiness had come from. Where the incongruousness of Shane's words from his actions was originating. He realized Shane wasn't concerned about where Michonne had gone because _he_ _already knew where she was._

Rick wiped sweat from his face with the back of his hand. Though it was only eight thirty in the morning, it was already nearly eighty degrees, a sign of an oppressively muggy day at the beginning of the rainy season. His clothes had already begun to stick to his body, his shirt becoming a road map of sweat. Between his anger and the temperature, he was melting down.

"So somehow she was on to you, huh? That was it, wasn't it?" It was starting to make sense to Rick now. All the sudden hard feelings going back and forth between the two of them. Somehow, Michonne had figured out a part or all of this. _And they decided to get rid of her?_ Still, Rick had a hard time believing Shane could have had a hand in harming her. But maybe, to his co-conspirators, she may have seemed like fair game, just a pawn to move off the chessboard.

"Did they take her?" Rick asked suddenly moving forward despite Shane's denials. "Where did they take her? Is she still alive?"

 _Somehow Shane didn't get it, even now._

He didn't realize it or maybe, even understand it, but Rick knew if Shane just came clean now, he could forgive him for everything, _anything_.

"She has nothing to do with this. Just tell me she's still alive and we, we…" Rick faltered. His throat got tight and thick with emotion.

"We _what_?" Shane frowned as if he were surprised and disgusted with him.

Rick put his hands on his hips to brace himself and rocked back on his heels. He prayed for the right answer, cocking his head to the side and looking at his friend through squinted eyes as if he burned too brightly to look at directly. In a way he did, it was too painful to look at Shane head on after what he'd just admitted he'd been a party to. Still, Rick knew somehow they could still be okay. They would make it okay. Nothing was too far gone yet.

"Just, just tell me, man…" He sounded desperate and knew it.

Rick didn't know what he was promising Shane exactly but there was too much water under their bridge and too many years of friendship, brotherhood honestly, for him to cut Shane loose. Maybe Shane didn't know that, but the important thing was, Rick did. If Shane could just be honest with him in that second, _in one answer_ , he would stand behind him, no, beside him, through whatever came down because of this. If he could be truthful, then it didn't matter what he'd done, they'd find a way to fix it. He loved Shane that much...his brother. He was still with him. He looked into Shane's dark eyes then and hoped all that was transmitted in one glance.

"I really don't know what you're talking about," Shane maintained coolly.

Then he looked away, at something over Rick's shoulder, unable to keep looking him in the eyes.

...And just that quickly, Rick snapped.


	44. Chapter 44

_*_ **Author's Note** *

So this morning isn't a good one for me. I won't elaborate other than to say that my general despondency shouldn't affect the update schedule...at least not in the near future. Oh yes and in reference to a question I recently got, for the record, Ngangabouka/Negan is a Black African in my story. (I specify because there are white Africans...like Charlize Theron).

 _7/28/15 11:06 GMT_

Cruising Altitude - 24,000 ft. above sea level ( _289mi southwest of Aberdeen, Scotland)_

"Cap'n?"

Rick looked up to see Daryl Dixon looking directly at him from the door to the cockpit.

The flight thus far had been so uneventful it had allowed Rick time for his mind to wander. _Why couldn't the trip to North Korea have been this easy? Why did it have to be the flight that took him miles away from Michonne that was smooth sailing almost as soon as they'd hit cruising altitude?_

"Rick?" Daryl said again in his gruff version of concern.

"Yeah," Rick answered, finally coming out of his ruminations.

"ETA thirty minutes. Said she's gonna do a circling approach to make sure all's clear before landing."

Rick nodded ignoring the slightly worried look on the man's face. He looked over at Rovia talking quietly with Dr. Mamet over a small checkers set they'd found onboard, stashed among the original flight crew's gear.

The cabin was considerably bigger with only three people in it. On the way to Africa, they had been a complement of nine and the cavernous space felt almost tight, fraught as it was with so many anxieties that they seemed to take up their own space. Now it felt hollow and empty... _or was that just how_ he _felt?_

Leaving Michonne and Sasha, apart from being a condition of the excursion, had seemed like a good idea. Entrusting their safety to Rhee and Espinosa was a no brainer. But now, just as he'd promised Michonne it wouldn't, the thought of them there with Negan worried him. And not in that motivating way, in the distracting way.

Rick sighed, watching Mamet's checkers happily hopscotch over Rovia's pieces, clearing half the board. A minute later, Rovia's hand nimbly did the same thing, clearing the other half. Moving from them, he glanced over at their other _Passenger?_ _Piece of cargo?_ with worry. He'd been vague with the details of this part to Michonne, knowing that while not an out-and-out lie, when she found out about it, she would not see it as anything less.

Sedated and trussed up like a Christmas bird was the clinician formerly known as Dr. Joan Maitland. She was the addition to the manifest that had resulted in a small scuffle in the lab the afternoon before. Infected with the virus and aboard the flight with them, she was either their salvation or potentially, a ticking time bomb.

* * *

"And you expect me to go take this to _Scotland_ for you?" Rick repeated as he looked down at the product of hours of intense negotiation. A paperback book-sized hard drive that Negan had placed in his hands a moment before.

"Well, you are the one with the plane and the pilot." Negan shrugged, like it was the most reasonable request in the world, instead of the most bizarre, given the circumstances.

Rick sat back in the office chair honestly flabbergasted. He'd spent over an hour just absorbing what he could barely believe was not a bullshit story. He'd seen the video call. He'd seen people on the verge of hypothermia and suffering from shock and exhaustion. In a camp under-equipped to handle the influx, that had a maximum capacity of two to three hundred, it could be no surprise that over a thousand mouths could go from under-fed to starving in only a week's time. And once he understood that, the negotiation had become pure performance on Rick's part. Still, he just didn't _want_ to help Negan and tried to make sure that was abundantly clear.

"How was it, exactly, that you knew what was happening so quickly?" Rick asked, unable to hide his complete distrust of the man in front of him...whether or not he believed the basic elements of his story were true.

He sat across from Negan and his man, Simon, in what looked like a secure server room. In the aggressively air-conditioned space, network towers whirred whisper-quiet around them. They'd patched their laptops directly into the mainframe —apparently because they'd killed off the resident IT manager in their initial push into the facility.

Negan smiled, as usual, easily.

"Let's just say for now that we had an inside man," he answered smugly as Simon snickered at his apparent joke.

"One that knew this was all happening days before anyone else?" Rick asked for clarity.

Negan nodded.

"That knew as soon as the people in this building knew." Negan basically bragged. "That was able to alert me when it was all just rumblings."

Rick thought about that.

Given the way that the outbreak overwhelmed emergency services in the US and other countries so quickly, it made sense that the contagion had been hiding in plain sight for days or possibly weeks ahead of time. Still, that didn't jibe with the things they'd been told about the transmission rate. According to what was left of the scientific community in the US, you were bitten and you turned, in lightening fast succession. This didn't compute with that.

"So you had reports that this was happening since last week? From where?" Rick asked, actually growing nervous about the possible implications of this on Carl, Judith and Beth's safety on the _Andrew Jackson._

"There were stories coming from all over. Rumors really," Simon volunteered eagerly.

Negan looked at his compatriot briefly before adding, "Yeah, it started out as some story about a jumbo jet from Asia that crashed in the foothills and some stark-raving crazies that survived the wreck and who were roaming the countryside around Goma. That sounded nuts so I sent my guys out to do some recon. Only one came back and he had this bizarre story about his group being attacked by a pack of rabid stewardesses." Negan laughed.

Rick realized he might have laughed too in better company and if he didn't know exactly what that kind of thing looked like. Flashes of the undead servicemen at the base haunted him whenever he dared to close his eyes. The whole thing remained surreal even though it was their new reality.

"So I put in a call to my 'mole'," Negan said the word jovially like the idea actually delighted him. "They reported that something strange had happened in the lab too. A super secret delivery accompanied by military escorts, an infected staff member under quarantine. Before I knew what the fuck was actually going on, I had over a hundred villagers at my gate begging to be let in. Asking me for sanctuary because their neighbors and family members had turned rabid. Then, in less than twenty-four hours, the number doubled, then tripled. That's when I decided to come here and find out what was going on."

"And you even knew about this facility because of…?" Rick asked the question Scott and his colleagues were apparently too scared to broach.

Negan laughed at the question as if it was absurd. "See, this is the fundamental problem with you people, Rick. This is _my_ country, _my_ land. Do you think anything could happen on either side of these borders, in Uganda even, that I wouldn't know about? How could you Americans even imagine you could take an undeclared shit without me knowing about it, let alone building a whole facility? I had people on the construction crew, the maintenance crew before the building was finished, and then the operational staff. My people basically _built_ this facility."

Rick looked at him and recognized that he meant every word. And honestly it made sense. To set-up a facility of this scale would require a massive effort and staff. Regardless of whether they were local or imported with extensive background checks, which the U.S. Department of Defense would insist upon, it actually would not be difficult for a man with Negan's reach to plant some of his own people.

"When I got here it was bedlam," Negan said, looking surprisingly grim. "You ever see that movie _The Thing_?"

Rick nodded.

"...Kurt Russell, Keith David and the Oatmeal man—"

"Wilford Brimley." Rick corrected. "Yeah, I saw it, I said."

Negan grinned at Rick's impatience. "Yeah, they used to show those commercials on the American tv we saw. I remember wanting that damn oatmeal so bad as a kid."

"You didn't miss anything."

"I know that _now_ ," He answered looking like he'd been genuinely disappointed by that. "Anyway, it was like that. When we got here it was fucking chaos. Rampant paranoia, no one was sure who had been bitten, scratched, they weren't sure exactly how they caught it, how it spread, when people turned. So basically no one knew shit. And they locked the whole damn place down tight as a drum. Quarantined whole departments. Protocols, I'm told."

"Everyone turns fast," Rick stated, suddenly feeling less certain.

"Yeah, out there. But in here it was a different strain or something they said. The lab shit they had was slow, real slow." Negan rose from his chair. "Lemme show you something."

Rick got up reluctantly following, far more curious than he wanted to be. He realized, as he followed Negan and Simon out of the IT suite, there was a part of him that was actually grateful for the distraction. A minute later, yet again, Rick found himself holding his tongue as he shared the cramped space of the elevator with Negan and his right hand man.

"Where are we going?" He asked finally just to break the silence which was taking him back to his worries.

"The lab," Negan admitted readily. "There's something you need to see."

Rick watched as they proceeded through the ritual of key cards and door codes in yet another series of long, bright, achromatic hallways and various doorways into the medical wing. Then with a whoosh of decompressing air, they entered a lab, through a sliding glass door. He could see five people working diligently in space suites through another sealed off doorway. They stood at microscope workstations and hardly looked up. As he entered, to his surprise tucked into a corner in a huddle with another man and woman, Rick saw Dr. Mamet. Milton looked up at the sound of the door, a pleasantly surprised smile on his face.

"Captain, I'm glad you finally came down," he said leaving, who Rick presumed were colleagues, to approach him.

"Hi Doc," He replied with false enthusiasm.

If Rick was honest, he knew he hadn't thought of Mamet or their primary objective in hours. All his time had been preoccupied with negotiating with Negan, his concerns regarding Michonne's operation and monitoring the progress of Sgt. Williams' concurrent transfusion. Michonne was floors beneath them in the operating suites being worked on by someone who readily admitted she had next to no experience and what little she did have was from during her clinical rotations years earlier. As a result of all that, Rick's every third thought continued to be about her until any other mental occupation had become preferable to the anxious pacing and obsessive worrying he really wanted to do. What Milton or even the rest of his crew were up to after Negan had assured their safety, barely occurred to him at all.

"I'm so glad you agreed. I think this is the most prudent course of action in light of the fact that the DMZ is most certainly a lost cause." He seemed positively upbeat and Rick was unsure whether that was a good thing or not. "I've been speaking with Dr. Porter and Dr. Lerner and transporting the subject, though no doubt tricky, should be doable provided we keep it sedated. I'm thinking four-point restraints, a cocktail of ten milligrams of Ativan and a hundred of Thorazine should be suffic—"

"Milton, Milton," Rick stopped him abruptly. "I haven't agreed to _anything_ yet."

The doctor halted immediately in his effusive chatter as if he'd been suddenly struck dumb. He looked between Negan and Rick, as if he didn't understand what he was being told.

"Captain, you understand this is our best chance to stay on mission? Whether it's by fate or providence, an opportunity to continue our vitally important work has presented itself, it's incumbent upon us to carry on."

Under the best of circumstances, Rick didn't like being lectured to. And deliberately or not, Mamet was doing it, not only while Rick felt like he was under enough stress to literally crack his bones but also in front of Negan and a roomful of others. What the doctor failed to understand was that to continue to be in a good bargaining position with Negan, Rick needed to appear disinclined to help. Mamet's clear enthusiasm for the mission was shooting that façade straight to hell. Nevertheless, he gritted his teeth, cocking his head to the side angling for the tact to handle the situation properly...as Michonne might, if she were there. This was where she had, in the past, complemented him perfectly, acting as a buffer and being the velvet glove to his iron fist.

"Doctor, I'm fully aware of what we _need_ to be doing. And as I said, we are still talking about how to move forward."

Interestingly, Negan didn't say a word. He just stood to the side watching it all unfold. Rick turned to look at him. To which he threw his hands up, shrugged and declared, "Hey, far be it from me to interfere. But for the record, I'm on the Doc's side. Look at this as a win-win. You got your team the medical care they needed and still managed to get your job accomplished as if it had been your big plan all along...or at least that would be how I spun it when I got home. You know, some Big Dick Swagger."

Rick sighed, shaking his head in resignation. Even Michonne would have wanted him to do this. Of that, he was fairly certain. Helping the greatest number of people was always her primary concern, no matter the risk to herself. Rick had the history of nearly a dozen relief missions with her to attest to that fact. The details would still require further hashing out but there was no point in continuing to pretend they wouldn't be doing it.

"Subject? What subject?" He asked finally, relenting.

Mamet actually exhaled as if he'd been depending on that response for his very breath. The two behind him, a sort of odd-looking man with a mullet and a woman with the stern visage of a nineteenth century schoolmarm seemed relieved as well.

"That's what I was bringing you down here to see. _Check this out_." Negan said then, gleefully guiding him toward a plexiglass wall on the far side of the lab. His enthusiasm was far more suited to a child showing off a new model-train set than a man discussing a pandemic.

As they approached the window, the thing inside the padded, walled-in room sprang to life and attacked the glass separating them. It seemed oblivious to the fact that its head bounced off the glass noisily. Rick jumped backwards, reaching reflexively for his empty holster.

Negan watched him with obvious delight, leaning against the glass directly beside the infected woman. He tapped on the glass with his knuckles, which threw her into a greater frenzy. "This woman had dinner with us two nights ago. Spoke in full sentences and everything. By last night she was comatose. This morning, this."

He waved his fingers in an arc before the glass like a magician saying "voila" at the end of a trick.

"So you're saying this is what you have here? A strain that can take days instead of minutes?" Rick asked worried about the story Negan had told earlier.

"No, Captain Grimes, this, that you're looking at, is Intervention 247." The female doctor standing with Milton stepped forward to declare.

"Are you saying she's like this because of a _vaccine_?"

Rick looked at the raving, slobbering woman again with pity. She was a formerly attractive woman with a full, heart-shaped face and long dark brown braids that framed it on both sides. She still wore her lab coat with her name and credentials embroidered on the breast pocket over a simple blue dress though her feet were bare and what remained of her stockings, ripped.

"Of course not, we didn't _give_ her the disease, in fact we gave her I247 immediately after she contracted the illness. That was why conversion took so long," the doctor answered.

Rick watched as the mulleted doctor behind her averted his gaze, drawing in upon himself like a threatened turtle and looking at the floor. He wondered how much of what this woman was saying was true.

"So what you're saying is what you have here slows down the process but doesn't stop it?"

The woman nodded.

"We're looking for the specific intervention cocktail that will take this contagion's viral load down like a 'bad boy' on the reality television juggernaut _Cops._ Whatchu gonna do when we come for you?" The oddly silent man behind Milton spoke up then surprisingly.

Rick looked at them all in disbelief. The oddness of the doctor's delivery was hard for Rick to take seriously but he noticed no one else had batted an eyelid which made this whole thing more surreal.

"Sorry, Rick Grimes, this is Dr. Dawn Lerner, virology and Dr. Eugene Porter, cytogenetics," Milton said belatedly realizing his omission. "Dr. Porter got here right as the facility was locked down, we're very lucky to have him."

Rick nodded perfunctorily as his eyes were drawn back to the doctor in the padded cell. She had settled somewhat, simply snarling and snapping at everyone from behind the glass. Her forehead was bloodied and her large, milky, formerly-brown eyes seemed to take in everything and nothing at the same time. She prowled the glass like a caged tiger. It reminded him again of the hospital in Turkey and how the infected there prowled and waited patiently for stimulation like automatons. It all unsettled Rick in a way he couldn't quite define, but chalked up to proximity. He'd never been this close to a live infected before without his gun. Michonne had already warned him of her experience in the Georgia-Pacific building, about how the infected could come through the glass for you, given the slightest provocation.

Rick stepped back without consciously thinking about it as Negan continued to toy with her through the glass. "You want me to do _what_ , now?"

Rick was surprised to hear his father's deep country accent in his enunciation of the question. But, he recognized this as the exact sort of nonsense request his father would not have touched with _someone else's_ hands.

"Well Captain, we want you to transport this subject and some of our trial data to the WHO laboratory in Aberdeen." Lerner continued taking the lead in this discussion with him.

Petite, but clearly the alpha-personality of the three doctors assembled, she seemed like a severe woman. Conventionally, she was what some would call attractive, with clear blue eyes and an oval face that came to a graceful point at her chin. But her chestnut brown hair was pulled back so tightly into a small bun at the back of her head that it made her forehead eggshell-smooth. Still, she exuded a quiet authority. She kept her hands in the pockets of her lab coat as she spoke. Yet Rick could see her fingers moving wildly inside them, hiding what he supposed was a nervous-tick.

"...You'll deliver the subject to Doctor Jo—"

"Y'all keep saying 'subject'. Wasn't she a colleague of yours? What's her _name_?" Rick bristled with sudden irritation.

Dr. Lerner stopped, surprised by the sudden interruption, and hesitated as if she'd lost her train of thought. Her eyes were wide platters of incomprehension looking intently at him as if he might further explain the question. She began again twice before finally simply saying, "Dr. Maitland, Joan."

Rick looked at Dr. Maitland again, satisfied to finally hear the name he couldn't quite make out on her coat. She stared back at him and for a moment it was almost as if there was still a thinking person there, until she snapped her teeth viciously. Her breath fogged up the glass as she leaned her head against it struggling to get through the clear barrier. As the fog occluded the window obscuring her face, Rick realized what he found so upsetting about her. _She resembled Michonne._ The slim, athletic build, deep brown skin, and long lush braids all brought Michonne to mind in a way he didn't like. Could they have been twins? No, but the doctor favored Michonne enough to make being placed in charge of this whole endeavor deeply unsettling for Rick.

He looked away quickly, growing more disturbed. "That's high risk. You already admitted you lost a lot of people just in transporting the virus from one USAMRIID base to another. Why can't you just give me a vial of whatever-it-is to transport?"

"You're not wrong Captain, but _this_ is why it's so risky," Lerner said, clearly relieved to be off the subject of Dr. Maitland directly. "The virus and vaccines can't live in a petri dish. Viruses can't be cultured on agar. They aren't living things on their own like bacteria. They must be grown in living tissue. And this virus kills cell cultures too quickly to study."

"Which means it has to be in a living creature," Rick finished the thought looking from Dr. Lerner to Milton.

"Yes," she admitted.

"You _knew_ this?"

Mamet shrugged, averting his gaze. "Well, I suspected. I mean, in the briefing I told you all that we had no live specimens to study. None of our tissue cultures survived, it's too virulent."

Rick rushed Milton, surprising everyone and grabbing him up by the collar of his shirt with both hands. He pushed him roughly back against the glass, oblivious to Dr. Maitland, suddenly frantic and agitated on the other side of it.

"So how did you suppose we were going to bring back the specimens from North Korea, Doctor?" Rick growled slamming Milton again to prompt an answer. "I didn't see any live mice in your shit!"

"Negative, Captain. It is our belief that Mickeys will not work in any event. We do believe them to be immune," Dr. Porter volunteered, oblivious to the volatility of the situation and the ill-timing of the remark.

Mamet squeezed his eyes shut as his glasses hung askew on his face. He grimaced waiting for the punch to the face Rick desperately wanted to give him.

Dr. Lerner pulled on Rick's arm trying to separate them, to little effect. "Captain, stop!"

"Tell me how, Doctor," Rick repeated, pulling the material tighter around Milton's throat. Rick felt rather than saw when Simon and one of the lab techs began to try to pull him off. "Tell me!"

The room had narrowed to just two people as Rick attempted to strangle Milton with his tie while the man desperately tried to disappear into the wall behind him, flattening himself in fear.

"HOW?" Rick roared in his face as the others struggled to pry them apart.

Just then, a calm voice answered from right near them, revealing precisely what Rick had feared. They both turned to look in that direction.

Negan, who had watched the entire exchange without speaking a word or moving an inch, finally spoke up. Just to the left of Rick's shoulder, he leaned against the glass totally unfazed by Dr. Maitland banging and snarling on the one side or the scuffle unfolding in front of him, and chimed in.

"Captain, tell me, you've ever seen _Aliens_? 'Member Weyland-Yutani Corporation and that rat-bastard Burke?"


	45. Chapter 45

May 9th 2011

Kisangani, DRC

Rick closed the distance between himself and Shane with the agility of a cat. Shane had no choice but to brace himself as the brute force of the attack propelled them into the wall behind him.

"WHERE IS SHE?" Rick shouted throwing a right hook at Shane's face. He was driven by pure fury now.

Shane brought his forearm up smoothly to block the punch and then brought it down over Rick's hand trapping it under his armpit. Then he delivered his own blistering punch to Rick's ribs that winded him.

Rick and Shane had physically fought few times in their lives. It could have been said that it was because they were best friends, effectively brothers, but Rick knew the truth. It was because they were so fairly well-matched. Roughly of the same height and build, when they fought it rarely resolved anything. More often what they were left with was a brawl in which property was damaged and they both walked away pretty-well fucked up. Drawing on the boxing technique he'd learned from his father, who had boxed while in the Service, Rick was the pugilist of the two. He was most likely to be viewed as having the best form, with a higher percentage of punches thrown to punches landed.

Still, what Shane lacked in style, he made up in tenacity. Shane fought like a junkyard dog or a barroom brawler —and he fought dirty. As he did in that moment when he pulled one of Maggie's prized heavy wooden masks off the wall and smashed it into Rick's side. Generally, when they fought, there was no real winner. While most often Rick would have been judged as having scored the technical knockout, usually by then, Shane would have inflicted enough damage in bruised ribs, busted lips, broken fingers and dislocated jaws that it was a hollow victory at best. For that reason, they'd quietly agreed as teenagers to avoid physical altercations at all costs.

In Rick's rage, all that collective history had fallen away, blinded by outrage. But as the African hardwood mask connected with Rick's shoulder painfully, it came back to him quickly. Yet Rick still refused to stop, using the opportunity of Shane's exposed ribs to drive two quick jabs into his side, knocking the wind out of him.

As he doubled over in response, Rick followed it up with a powerful downward blow of his fist that glanced off Shane's cheek and made his knees wobble slightly. Shane pushed him back roughly into the small dining table to give himself a moment to regain his equilibrium. The corner of the table connected painfully with Rick's tailbone.

"Why you doin' this man? Over a _girl_?" Shane said out of breath and incredulous. His eyebrow split, blood mingled with sweat and ran in a thin line down from near his temple along the side of his face. He grabbed at his side and winced. "Man, I don't get it. You got Lori and Carl at home who love you. You are so lucky. You're so busy with this bitc—"

" _Finish that sentence_ ," Rick growled the warning between gritted teeth. "I dare you to."

They stared each other down from across the small space. He was taking the same opportunity Shane was availing himself of to catch his breath but really Rick wanted to knock all his friend's teeth into the back of his head. He was suddenly grateful he'd left his gun in the office, before he did something rash.

"Whatever," Shane said panting, "Point is, she was busy butting into shit that wasn't her business. Maybe she upset the wrong people?"

Rick bristled at the fact that Shane was still trying to lay Michonne's disappearance at the feet of unknown others.

"Maybe she'll come back, maybe she won't." Shane shrugged as if he couldn't care less either way. "But we don't need her. _You_ don't need her."

With Shane's words, Rick felt simultaneously like the bottom had dropped out of his stomach and his chest constricted at the same time. _You don't need her._

An undefined rage surged in Rick's brain like a dark wave as he came at his friend again, closing the distance between them in two strides. Shane braced himself for the gut-punch that came. Then he returned it with a punch to the jaw that was followed through by a sharp elbow to the side of the face that almost whipped Rick's whole head around. Rick's ear rang from the blow. He grabbed Shane by the collar of his shirt then and whaled on him with his fist, hitting him four times before Shane could trap him in a boxer's bear hug. Pinning his arms to his sides, Shane head butt Rick hard and then released him to stagger backward. Shane lifted his leg then and kicked out, connecting squarely with the center of Rick's chest and launching him backward over the high back of the couch and onto Maggie's small coffee table.

The table broke under Rick's deadweight as he flew onto it. Shane came calmly around the couch then, grabbing Rick by the back of his collar and the seat of his pants and threw him head first into a large, heavy bookcase that covered one wall. Rick's head collided painfully with the teakwood shelving. Books spilled out onto Rick as he crumpled, dazed.

"Where is she, Shane?" Rick said weakly as warm, thick red liquid trickled from his head into his eye occluding his line of sight.

"I can't believe you, man. You sound like a broken fucking record. I. don't. know!" Shane reiterated emphatically before whispering. " _But I hope she's dead already._ "

Rick was in a daze as Shane raged to himself. Lying prone he couldn't see him but he could hear the hard snuffling as his friend stood over him crying.

"Why'd you have to do this? Make me do this, huh?" Shane fretted and paced as Rick tried in vain to gather himself. He was dazed. "I just needed a couple more days and everything would have been fine."

 _A couple more days?_ Rick flipped painfully onto his back and looked up at his friend. Shane's shoulders shook as he sobbed.

"Please," Rick whispered hoarsely, looking around the room. Even from his vantage point on the floor it was chaos and Shane stood over him clearly out of sorts, staring into nothingness. "Shane, please. Just tell me where she is. We can _fix_ this."

Shane looked down at him then, his face crumpling into a mask of scorn, the tears drying up as his expression morphed into one of disgust. Shane raised his arms and began to scream. It was a primal, guttural sound like a wounded animal that cut through Rick. Rick had never heard anything like it before and couldn't tell what Shane was doing until it was almost done. Suddenly, the entire bookshelf began to rock as Shane roared. Books flew off the shelves in an avalanche and Rick barely had time to move his arms up to shield his face before the whole bookcase came down on him. Within seconds, he was shrouded in darkness.

* * *

"Captain," The voice was female and urgent, terrified even. "Rick."

Rick could feel the cold compress across his forehead and feel the softness beneath him but he couldn't respond. Light permeated his eyelids but for a moment they were still too heavy to open. He struggled as voices called to him as if from down a long dark tunnel. He blinked a number of times before his eyes would cooperate and focus on what was before him.

Makemba looked down into his face, hers etched with concern. Her round, soft hazel eyes looked on the verge of tears as she watched him. At her side sat Maggie wearing a similar expression but if at all possible more pained. "Rick?"

Maggie's voice was choked with emotion, and more specifically fear. "Wake up."

Rick's brain felt like it was rattling around in his skull. He was lying on Maggie's couch, with Makemba perched on the edge by his hip. She held his hand in her lap while Maggie sat near his feet. He looked around and saw to his chagrin that he hadn't imagined it, Maggie's apartment looked like a tornado had touched down in the center of it.

To add further to his general sense of disorientation, Carter came out of Maggie's kitchen nook with a glass of ice water, which he handed to her. Then like a game of telephone, she passed it to Makemba who brought it carefully to his head. He attempted to take the glass from her but found that his hands shook uncontrollably.

"Just drink, Captain," the woman said gently refusing to relinquish the cup.

He obeyed surprised at how parched he felt. He drank greedily for a moment before pushing the glass away and attempting to speak.

"Embry, what are you doing here?" Rick said satisfied that despite how shaky he felt, his voice was still solid.

Carter chuckled lightly, shaking his head.

"That's the _first thing_ you have to say?" Maggie said frowning. "Rick, what the hell happened here? Where's Shane? Who did this?"

Carter stood behind Maggie and Makemba so only Rick saw his features darken. He shook his head to indicate that he hadn't yet told her anything. "I was trying to reach you. Ms. Greene answered your phone distraught, so I came right over."

Rick dragged a hand down over his face while blowing out a heavy breath. Then he felt it, a patchwork of small bandages taped all over, like a physical accounting of his legion mistakes. Maggie still waited for an answer watching him. He wondered how to go about telling this woman, a woman he saw as a little sister, that the man they had both trusted, that they both loved, that they both thought they knew, that that man was a criminal...and worse yet, implicated in Michonne's disappearance.

"Shane," Rick admitted reluctantly. "After you left, we fought."

Maggie's large eyes grew larger with disbelief. She looked around surveying the damage again as Rick had: The overturned bookshelf, broken coffee table, destroyed mask, broken glass. The general level of chaos made it difficult to comprehend what had possibly precipitated it.

"Why?" Maggie said softly, clearly not understanding.

"Because the Captain did _exactly_ what he told me not to do," Carter started smugly as Rick shot daggers at him. "He confronted the person he believed was involved in Michonne's disappearance."

If looks could kill, Rick's glare at Carter would have made the man spontaneously combust and that would have been just fine with him. Maggie turned her body to look between the two men.

"...And in doing that, he gave Walsh a two hour head start," Carter continued giving Rick his own death glare.

"Two hours?" Rick looked down at his wrist and after a minute of trying to get his eyes to focus on the tiny dots on his watch-face, made out the time. It was nearly eleven o'clock. Carter was right, he'd lost them two hours.

 _Fuck_.

"Maggie, what happened?" He asked in frustration. "Maggie?"

Maggie looked at him again as if called back from a far distance away. He could tell she was trying to digest what Carter had said.

"You didn't come," She answered quietly. "You said you were ten minutes behind me but neither of you came. At nine, I went to your office and they said neither of you ever showed up. So I started calling. I thought maybe you guys had to go into the field. But then, I realized I'd been calling Shane all morning. By ten, I started to worry."

Rick pulled himself upright carefully with Makemba's help. She shifted slightly beside him as Maggie stood then and in doing so revealed that there were more people in the room than he thought. Behind her, on the far side of the room stood Samir huddled quietly in conference with a man Rick didn't know personally but recognized as a member of Carter's staff at AfriCOM.

"What the fuck are _they_ doing here?" Rick asked controlling his volume the best he could.

Maggie looked behind her and then back at him. "I don't know. I got scared. I couldn't reach you. Michonne is missing. I didn't know what to do. I went to your office and you still hadn't been there and no one knew where you were, so I decided to come back to the apartment and Samir agreed to come with me."

Rick couldn't argue the point. It could hardly be considered a surprise even, since technically that was his job. Particularly if Maggie suddenly felt there was cause to be concerned about her safety or anyone else's on staff, Samir was obligated to accompany her.

"It was a good thing too," Maggie continued. "I wouldn't have been able to get the bookcase off you by myself."

Maggie's voice thickened with emotion. "When I got here and you were under there, I freaked out."

"She thought you'd been killed," Makemba added.

An additional wave of guilt flooded Rick for scaring Maggie.

"Thank God Kem was home on her lunch break," Maggie said putting a hand on Makemba's arm.

Rick had completely forgotten that the young nurse was Maggie's next-door neighbor.

"It's only the fact that the top fell on the arm of the couch that stopped you from being crushed. And it still took all three of us to pull you out from under there."

Rick looked again at the overturned bookcase with books and Maggie's knick-knacks strewn all over the floor. Like in all the finished apartments the UN let out to its employees, the case was made of a solid, hard and heavy African Zebrawood that would cost thousands of dollars in the United States. Every apartment's book shelves were covered in books that amounted to a lending library where every resident added new books when they came. In some of the apartments, that meant the shelves were filled to near overflowing. Luckily for Rick, Maggie's had been more modestly stacked, which left her room to add decorative trinkets to it and made it significantly lighter than some others. Rick couldn't help his shudder at the thought of being trapped under the bookcase that was in his own apartment.

"I think you may have a concussion," Makemba said. "Someone's going to have to stay with you tonight to wake you up periodically."

"We don't have any time," Rick said getting up abruptly and excusing himself as he pushed past her, swinging his legs off the couch. Makemba stood quickly to give him space.

"Carter, what did you find?"

"Just as you said, this Silver Runway Corporation was at the center or ancillary to a bunch of the transactions that your fax to us flagged as questionable. I put CID on the track of a couple guys that have handled the majority of those transactions and shipments."

"What the fuck, Carter?" Rick said getting to his feet gingerly. Makemba and Maggie assisted him despite the fact that he tried to shake them both off. "What if they tip them off?"

"You mean, like you did with your guy who just _literally_ tried to kill you and make a run for it?"

Rick was taken aback.

He glanced at Maggie quickly to see if she felt the full weight of that accusation against Shane as he did. Even as he still struggled to regain his bearings, it never for even a second occurred to him that Shane had tried to kill him. _That wasn't possible._ Their fight got carried away...as it often did, which is why they didn't do it.

Maggie looked shocked at Carter's words too, trying to catch up with what was being said.

"CID is still at least a day behind us in piecing anything together and my guys have eyes on the guys that could be responsible. So, no one's tipping anybody off and no one's making a run for it in _my_ camp." Carter made sure the words hit home.

Rick eyed the man standing with Samir, "How do I know they can be trusted?"

Carter's mouth flattened into a thin line and he glared at Rick, "Fuck you, Grimes. Do you trust your guys?" He nodded towards Samir.

"I do," Rick said simply, easily. He trusted his guys with his life and the lives of everyone else in his charge.

"And that despite the fact that you've _just_ been proved dead wrong." Carter shook his head as if he pitied Rick. "So why don't you do me a favor: worry about cleaning your own house. Let me worry about keeping mine clean, okay?"

Rick would have felt more chastened if he truly believed that things were as they seemed. But there had to be something missing, some extenuating factor that he had not yet accounted for in judging Shane's behavior.

 _There had to be an explanation._

"Will someone please tell me what the hell you're talkin' about?" Maggie said forcefully. Like her father, she was neither a screamer nor a shouter so this was the closest Rick had ever heard to her being to irate.

Rick took her hand and squeezed it between both of his and looked deeply into her eyes, hoping to convey calm. "I promise I will but right now we are hours behind Shane and I want to get to him before he does something he can't take back."

"I think that ship's sailed, Captain," Carter said offhandedly to whoever was listening. Maggie and Rick both turned to look at him with irritation. "What?"

"I will tell you everything I know, but right now the clock is ticking. We need to find Michonne and I'm convinced Shane knows where she is."

As Rick gave her the broadest possible strokes of what he knew so far, Maggie's lips trembled and her eyes welled. The meaning of those words washed over her and scalded. For a moment, she looked as if the knowledge was going to drown her. Rick gripped her by the back of her neck as if to buoy her. She clutched her chest with one hand and covered her mouth with a shaky other as he pulled her into an embrace.

"Carter, you told me that AfriCOM's resources were at my disposal?" Rick said continuing on and choosing to ignore his last comment.

"Within reason. Why? What'dya need?"

"A ride," Rick said thinking on his feet. There were few avenues available to Shane now. He had no idea whether Rick would have contacted the authorities as soon as he came to. Right now, knowing Shane, he was working on tying up all the loose ends. And Rick speculated that he would think his best bet was to run to his co-conspirators for assistance. Which in this case was Pop Negan himself. With luck, that meant Shane was also running to where Michonne was.

"A ride where? You have no idea where Walsh is going."

"No, but I actually think I might know of someone who does."

Carter looked at him with genuine surprise. "So where to?"

"Uganda," Rick answered with a confidence he didn't feel as everyone in the room looked on.


	46. Chapter 46

* **Author's Note** *

I'm so sorry for the delay everyone. I went away for the weekend and got sick so I'm bedridden right now. But I'm gonna be 100% honest, I hate this chapter so I was really up in the air about posting it at all anyway. I wanted to fix it before I posted it but I'm literally too sick to do it. So in order to keep to my update schedule this crappy chapter has to post untinkered with. I'm so sorry you guys. I strive to always give ya'll my best effort and this isn't it. Forgive me. I hope it's okay anyway. Thanks as always for reading!

7/28/15 13:22 CAT  
Medical Station Omicron, Rwanda

Michonne turned her head and looked at the time on the wall clock over the door.

 _With any luck, Rick was almost there._

Maybe for once things could go as expected and he would face few obstacles to his objective. Maybe then he could deliver what he was supposed to, pick up what he had to and be back here by the time she opened her eyes tomorrow. It was that hope that kept her in bed, if she was honest.

Normally, injury or no, Michonne would have been up and around. In college, she'd broken her collarbone in a collision with a teammate during a rugby scrum. Nevertheless, she was out in a cast cheering them to victory the very next day, high on Vicodin and team spirit. Opting out was not in Michonne's DNA but still she seriously entertained the idea of letting her PCA pump lull her into a drug-induced haze for the next day and a half until Rick was safely back at her side. In fact, at this point, it was taking more willpower now to _not_ press the green button than it had all the night before when she was in excruciating pain.

She wanted him back and she wanted him back safe and most importantly, she wanted him back now. It had taken her most of the morning before she could even acknowledge how juvenile that thought was and then additional hours before she eased herself gingerly out of bed. She wasn't alone. She knew that. Glenn and Rosita were there with her, with one likely somewhere right outside her door. She hadn't wanted that, she told Rick emphatically. But they'd decide as a group, and as was becoming usual, without her, so he'd insisted.

The logic, as Rick told her, was that since she was the person Ngangabouka most clearly had an interest in, she was the person they most needed to keep an eye on. Still, Sasha occupied a room across the hall, so she preferred to think of it as a kind of two-for-one deal. Michonne had discovered she wasn't alone in her confinement when she wheeled herself into the young sergeant's room the before evening while the rest of the crew were at dinner.

* * *

She found the young officer sitting quietly on the side of the bed as if she were contemplating something. Michonne could hardly blame her for being in an introspective mood, given how topsy-turvy the world had suddenly become. Any time alone was suddenly spent with thoughts of where humanity now stood and what each individual's new place in it would be... _or at least Michonne thought so._ Which, at least she found, made being alone an increasingly difficult prospect...hence her impromptu visit to Sasha's room.

"Knock-knock," She said tentatively, wheeling herself inside without waiting for a response.

"Ms. Philippe," Sasha startled, nearly hopping off her bed to present herself at attention. She seemed to remember at the last moment that Michonne was not her superior officer. "What are you doing here?"

Michonne was surprised Sasha was surprised to see her and said so.

"Why?" She asked plainly, staying right at the mouth of the door in case Sasha wanted her out. Michonne knew, as difficult as the last thirty or so hours had been for her, it had been doubly bad for the young woman...and unlike Michonne, Sasha had been fully conscious for the majority of it.

Sasha looked down bashfully, turning a warmer color than the golden brown she already was. The transfusion had brought the color back to her cheeks in a way that was oddly becoming. And Sasha's wide, slightly almond-shaped eyes were so expressive, Michonne had noticed, that she had a good idea what the young sergeant was going to say even before she said it.

"I wasn't on my best behavior before, Ma'am. I'm truly sorry about what I said earlier," Sasha said contritely.

She sat on the edge of her bed barefoot, in a sweatsuit provided by the facility. With her legs dangling off the edge, in that moment she looked more child than adult and Michonne had to fight the urge to treat her that way. The two small clips keeping her short, curly afro that looked like a dark brown cotton candy halo, pulled back on either side of her head didn't help matters either.

"Sgt. Williams, we were all on edge. No one was at their best and given what you endured…" Michonne trailed off as she watched Sasha cradle her arm delicately, looking down on it sadly. The stump where her hand had been was freshly dressed and nestled in a sling.

"To tell the truth, I hardly remember what was said." It wasn't completely a lie. Much of the hours after the accident were a fog for Michonne. Rick had filled in some gaps her memory couldn't eariler but there were still a number of holes. "Whatever words were exchanged were done so during a stressful time."

"No, Captain Grimes saved my life and if it wasn't for you, he," Sasha looked around and lowered her voice as if the walls had ears, "probably wouldn't have let us in. I'm not one of your people but you both saved my life and I needed to have been a little more grateful and a lot less bitchy. So, I just need to say, thank you."

Michonne nodded accepting the Sergeant's words graciously, even though she didn't feel like she'd done anything to deserve them. In fact, the idea that they had only been granted admission to the facility because of some perceived affinity between Nganagbouka and herself left her worried and cold. It was a sentiment that a number of the others had now reiterated and it frightened her a little more every time she heard it.

"Sergeant, let's dispense with that idea right now. We're all here _together_. We're in this thing together and you are most certainly one of my people," Michonne said it and meant it.

She hadn't even shared these thoughts with Rick. But the truth was, she felt a responsibility to the team that had ably brought her there unknowing of what they'd walked into. Increasingly, she even felt a certain concern for the staff, like Dr. Denise, that were already there when they arrived. And if, as was suggested, her previous encounter with Ngangabouka gave her some type of influence or in-road with him, she'd started to realize, it was her responsibility to bring it to bear for the good of everyone trapped in there with them.

So, for that reason alone, Michonne had finally stirred. She had risen out of bed thinking of Sasha, Glenn, Rosita and the others trapped here with the homicidal narcissist. She wondered what exactly she could do to further assure their safety. Rick had a job to do and people to take care of out there, and looking at Sasha, she realized suddenly, she had the very same in here.

* * *

Later, the relatively innocent question, "Now what seems to be the problem, Ms. Philippe?" was Michonne's first introduction to Dr. Lerner as the woman stepped into her room from where she'd loitered in the hallway. Until that moment, Michonne had begun to wonder if she'd made the right choice in deciding to finally shake off her funk and get out of her hospital bed.

From the outset, in her very gentle way, Denise had been resistant to Michonne's desire for a walkabout. Ariane's admonition the night before must have gotten to her, Michonne considered. Once Denise found out that Michonne was trying to leave her room that afternoon she'd worked hard to discourage her. After intense haggling with both Denise and Rosita, who was far more adamant, Michonne managed to convince them to remove the IV line from her arm and have her medication stepped down from the powerful Schedule ii narcotics she'd been on for the past nearly twenty-four hours to something more manageable.

Still, it was only the intervention of the other surviving doctor, Dr. Lerner, that facilitated Michonne's dispensing with the wheelchair, in favor of a metal cane. Her disagreement with her two "primary caregivers" had grown contentious. At one point after they returned from lunch, Michonne had been forced to threaten to pull the IV right out of her arm to be taken seriously. That was the point at which even Sasha emerged from her room to find out what was going on. Michonne refused to be confined and had accused Rosita and Denise of conspiring to do just that. She realized she'd missed her opportunity to just go off on her own while everyone was occupied with their meals. In the end, Dr. Lerner, the most senior staff member had to be called to cast the deciding vote in her favor.

Yet despite the doctor's vote of confidence, Michonne inexplicably took an instant dislike to the woman. She seemed untrustworthy and insincere. In the end, Michonne had walked away from the experience feeling as if she'd been "handled" like an unreasonable child. Still, because unlike Michonne, the exercise would actually be good for her, Dr. Lerner had managed to get Sasha to agree to be Michonne's companion on her roaming. And that worked out especially well because by then, Michonne was just about sick to death of Denise, Rosita and basically everyone else on the minuscule medical staff that insisted on hover over her.

"You spent a lot of time upstairs yesterday…" Michonne broached the topic to Sasha later without asking a specific question, as they walked toward the elevator, arms interlinked for mutual support.

"Yeah, they wanted to run all these tests. Scott said to see if I had any traces of virus in my system or antibodies or anything." Sasha stepped away briefly to press the elevator call button. "They didn't find anything of use."

Sasha sounded intriguingly disappointed to Michonne's ears.

"You hoped they'd find something?" Michonne asked impressed.

Sasha shrugged. "I mean, if it could have helped, yes. I don't want anyone else to die...if I can help it."

"Even if that meant you were infected?"

Sasha nodded. "If that meant they could use me like the doctor."

There was so much nobility in that answer. It reminded Michonne of something Rick would say. ...Or even, Mag— She didn't allow herself to finish the thought. They barely knew each other. Yet Michonne felt a near immediate kinship with this woman. She pat Sasha's arm and a feeling she hadn't felt in years flooded her. Michonne felt a sudden tightness in her chest as she mulled its genesis.

To distract herself, she focused on Sasha's words. Rick had told Michonne there was an infected doctor upstairs being kept in a padded cell for research purposes. She understood it, but the idea of having a human being caged like a lab rat didn't sit right with her. And something about the people of this facility's willingness to do that, instead of putting her, a former colleague and maybe even friend, out of her misery worried Michonne, deeply. She knew Ngangabouka and Ariane's type. But what sort of people were these scientists? Given the answers provided by the doctors upstairs, it was a question she kept coming back to.

"So Scott," Michonne asked, deliberately changing the subject. "He, the tall, cute, bald one? I heard he's been pretty attentive to you."

Sasha surprised Michonne by blushing. Michonne had been taking a shot in the dark and had almost felt guilty for teasing the young woman. The truth was, Scott was actually the only other member of the medical staff, besides Denise, Michonne could readily identify. Scott had been taking Michonne's vital signs regularly since yesterday afternoon, to the point where his intrusions had begun to annoy both her and Rick. She hadn't expected Sasha to actually react to her insinuation. But there was no denying he was a good-looking guy. Apparently in all the time the handsome RN had spent with Sasha, she'd noticed it too. Michonne smiled. This was an odd time to play cupid but she liked the feeling of normalcy the conversation gave her.

"I thought you and the Captain…" Sasha started hesitantly, clearly unsure on how familiar they were planning to be with each other.

"Oh, we are," Michonne answered, pleased at how easily it came to her mouth and how happy it made her to share with someone. "But I do still have eyeballs."

Sasha giggled as Michonne took her arm again and they stepped carefully onto the elevator. It was a thoroughly pleasant sound from a woman who had been little more than a wan visage in the background for the entirety of their brief acquaintance.

"Well, I do too and Rick's pretty easy on the eyes himself," Sasha confessed then.

"That, he definitely is," Michonne confirmed thinking of the gorgeous, glittering blue eyes and easy-going smile that had consistently made her life complicated since the day they'd first met and then the deceptively skillful hands she'd only just become acquainted with the night before. Rick had only been gone for hours and yet she ached to be with him again. She wondered then, how she had managed the four years prior when they'd both been out of touch with each other entirely?

Sasha smiled in agreement but didn't say anything watching Michonne's face.

"So did Scott tell you anything about the facility? About the staff?" Michonne asked getting back to her actual purpose for conversation as the elevator alighted on the first floor they intended to explore together.


	47. Chapter 47

May 9th 2011  
Kyangwali Refugee Camp, Uganda

Typical of an East African afternoon at the beginning of the rainy season, a torrential downpour greeted them when they landed in Uganda. The short helicopter flight had been a rollercoaster of turbulence that reflected the unsettled nature of Rick's emotions. He worried that he was headed off on a wild goose chase that wouldn't place him on Shane's trail. He was annoyed that he needed Carter's help and worse yet that the man had been right in calling him out earlier. But more than anything else, he was anxious that he had, indeed, given Shane a head start that would cost Michonne her life.

Rick looked at his traveling companions, all of whom seemed lost in their own thoughts. He couldn't blame them. No one knew what they were headed into and where this path would ultimately lead. All things being equal, Rick would have preferred to have come here alone. But no one, least of all Carter, who was lending use of a USAfriCOM transport helicopter, was willing to agree to that. So Rick sat silently among Carter, his officer Barnes, Samir and despite his vehement opposition, Maggie, waiting for the chopper crew to open the side doors. In the end, Makemba had been the only person in Maggie's apartment that morning whose accompaniment he had been able to nix out of hand.

As the flight crew slid open the doors of the helicopter, Rick saw a lone figure standing on the small asphalt landing pad. Standing under the manufactured shade of an oversized golf umbrella, her face was obscured but Rick knew who she was. He'd just seen her the month before and even if he hadn't, even if it had been years and worlds away she would have been recognizable. Looking like a younger, blonder version of her older sister, stood Amy Harrison. Rick had only ever met the young doctor-in-training three times, but besides being her sister's doppelganger, she'd made a positive impression on him.

The first time Rick had met the young woman, it had been four years ago when she was between her first and second years of med school and was looking for clinical volunteering experience. Rick was struck by her sunny disposition, determined spirit and the way her affable personality was nearly diametrically opposed to her older sister's. Through he didn't have the visceral reaction to Andrea that Shane had had —on either end of the spectrum— Andrea was never among Rick's favorite people. But he'd liked Amy quite a lot in their few interactions and had found it difficult to believe that she and Andrea had grown up in the same household. It had made sense to him later when he learned that due to their age difference they technically hadn't.

Amy came as close as the whirring of the helicopter's rotors would allow and gave them a brief, more perfunctory smile. Rick had been forced to tell her something of what was going on in order to enlist her aid and unfortunately that meant letting her know Michonne was missing. The rotors slowed to a stop and as the noise died down Rick called to her. She tipped the umbrella up as they stepped out into the downpour and stepped closer to offer shade. Rick watched Carter, Samir and Barnes all brighten despite the rain as her comely face came into full view.

"Amy, thanks for this." He said when they were within earshot of one another.

"Rick," She answered grimly reaching for a one-armed embrace.

"Amy, this is Colonel Carter Embry, Lieutenants Justin Barnes and Samir Padukone, and Maggie Greene."

Amy nodded and smiled weakly at them all. "Oh, I've met Maggie before," she said easily.

"When was the last time we saw each other?" Maggie asked before answering the question herself. "At the Humanitarian of the Year Gala, you came with Marc Dodson, right?"

Amy smiled more genuinely. She pulled Maggie into a similar embrace shielding her with the umbrella.

"Marc and I went to college together," Maggie explained to the rest of them after they released each other.

It made sense that Maggie and Amy knew of each other even if they didn't really know each other well. The Harrisons had a longer history of public service —diplomatic service to be exact— than even the Greenes. Andrea and Amy's father, John, had been Gerald Ford's Ambassador to the UN and George Bush Sr.'s Ambassador to the former Yugoslavia. Both women would have been considered UN blue bloods, if there was any such a thing.

"That's right," Amy said brightly. "It's good to see you, although I wish it was under better circumstances. Let's get you all dry."

Rick looked around. In a matter of a minute or two in the rain they had all managed to look like a bunch of drowned rats. Still, there wasn't time to even fret about it.

"Did you find her?" He asked trying to keep the desperation out of his voice.

"You didn't give me much, Rick. But I gathered together everyone Michonne reported speaking with. Hopefully, someone will know something."

Amy and Maggie led the way under the shade of the umbrella as Rick and the others pulled up the rear, lugging heavy bags of gear with them. No one knew what they would soon be venturing into and for once Carter and Rick had been of the same mind about being prepared for anything.

* * *

"Thank you very much, Ma'am," Rick said to the seventh woman he'd spoken with in the past three hours.

"I don't know what you're looking to know but I hope that helps," the older woman said imprisoning his hand in both of hers briefly before rising to her feet.

It was dusk before Rick was willing to acknowledge that they were not going to get what they needed from these people. It was no one's fault. All of the people had been eager to help. Anything for the pretty young UN worker who had come to collect their stories and help them in any way she could. But they were from all different parts of the country, with very few things in common other than having been displaced by fighting that stopped them from returning home—if there was even a home to go back to. This camp was quite large, at its maximum capacity more than ten thousand people could live within its perimeter, with women and children predominating. Currently, the administrators had informed Rick and Michonne during their last visit, the camp topped out at over five thousand refugees. Many of whom didn't even speak the same language, with some speaking only local dialects, while others only spoke one or two official languages.

With a sigh of exasperation, Rick realized only Michonne would have been able to make heads or tails of this disparate group. _Of course_.

The large tent was a din of noise as the women spoke not only with Amy and the translator she'd been able to procure, Mathilde, but also amongst themselves. Rick looked across the space at them all speaking to someone. Samir, who spoke a smattering of very poor Kinyarwanda, was with someone. Even Carter's man, Barnes, who was passable in French, talked with a young woman with a baby on her hip. Maybe, it occurred to Rick, he didn't know what they were doing there at all. As the hours passed, it was seeming more and more like the fool's errand he'd feared it might be. A glance toward Carter confirmed he thought so, as the idiot stood off to the side watching the group like he was a spectator, instead of actually helping. Rick didn't even have the energy to be angry, especially when it looked like Carter was right...yet again.

Just then, Barnes turned around, his grey eyes searching the room until they landed on Rick. He summoned him with a wave. Rick thanked the woman again and moved quickly to Barnes' side.

"Captain, this is Ms. Ekiring, she said someone she saw Ms. Philippe speaking with is missing."

"Missing?"

"As in, not here in this tent," Barnes clarified.

"An older Congolese woman?" Rick asked anxiously. "Une femme plus âgée?"

The woman frowned and shook her head answering in French.

"No, middle-aged," Barnes translated. "Named Lady. They spoke for a long time, she said."

Amy came up beside them then. "I'm sorry Rick. Her name wasn't on Michonne's list."

Rick shook his head knowing that Amy would blame herself for this. But honestly Michonne did that all the time. The time she spent anywhere working for the UN wasn't all devoted to just doing her job. She liked to know people, know their stories, know where they were coming from. All along, in the back of his mind, he knew the woman he was looking for probably wouldn't be on Michonne's "visitor's log" but he'd needed to start somewhere.

"So who's Lady? Where is Lady?" Carter asked stepping forward finally from where he'd hung back watching the other members of their group doing all the work.

With a snap of the fingers and a curt word in Swahili from one of the women, one of the children that had been sitting restlessly along the sides of the tent waiting for their parents to be free, sprang to his feet and dashed out the door. The women and men talked animatedly among themselves as Rick spoke with Carter and Amy in front of Barnes and his interviewee, Ms. Ekiring.

"This doesn't sound like the woman I'm looking for," Rick admitted.

"Probably not but she should know something. I don't know why I didn't include Lady to begin with," Amy lamented. "Lady knows everyone. She'll know something. I should have realized she would have spoken to Michonne."

"It's okay. We know now and maybe she can lead us in the right direction."

"And what direction is that, Grimes?" Carter asked condescendingly.

Rick debated answering him. There was nothing to be gained from continuing to keep this a secret. But he despised the idea of explaining himself to Carter, so he looked at Amy and Maggie when she joined their little huddle. "The woman I'm looking for was from a village destroyed by Negan's men and Michonne found her living here. I think she may have some idea of where Negan's compound is."

"Why?" Carter challenged as if Rick were speaking to him alone anyway.

"The woman I'm looking for is from the same village as Ariane," Rick continued.

Maggie stiffened in response to that revelation. Carter and Amy looked on blankly.

"She's one of Negan's wives," he clarified. "From what Michonne told me the woman I'm looking for knew a lot about Ariane and her family. I'm hoping that meant her whereabouts too."

Carter blew out a peeved breath. "So you've got a hunch and we're following you around on the off chance you're right?"

"No one told you to come along, Carter. I told you I'd handle this."

The two men glared at each other.

"You think I'd just let you go out on a snipe hunt on Uncle Sam's dime without some sort of adult supervision?" He sneered.

Rick stepped forward to give his response to Carter's question physically while Maggie raised a hand to mediate the impending altercation. Just then, the tent flap opened and the young boy who had run out earlier returned accompanied by a woman.

The woman was short and rotund but moved with purpose. The trip from her tent to this one clearly was more strenuous than she anticipated so she breathed deeply before speaking. Amy went to her with Mathilde at her side. Despite the fact that they were standing too far away to listen in, the people around Rick all fell silent in anticipation. After a few moments, in conference, Amy turned toward Rick beckoning him over without saying anything and he went obediently.

Amy made introductions through Matilde while Lady spoke in animated Swahili, nodding vigorously.

"She said she remembers Michonne very well. She is her good friend," Mathilde relayed. "She came to visit her twice after the first evening they met. She says she made Michonne some _mandazi_ and Michonne liked it so much she got her a kerosene hotplate, which allows her to sell meals now."

Rick watched as Lady beamed with pride.

"She said people come from all over just to have her _matoke_ and _sambusa_ now. So anything she can do for Michonne, she will."

There was a relieved sigh behind him and Rick turned his head to see that Maggie stood just behind him. She put a hand to his arm as if bracing herself and he pulled her to him putting his arm over her shoulder, encouraged.

"Can you ask her if she knows if Michonne spoke with a little old woman from the DRC? She would only have gotten here in the last two or three months," Rick asked Mathilde.

He could have kicked himself for not caring enough to ask the right questions that night at the camp when he'd seen them together. Michonne had shared a little with him in the privacy of her hotel room that evening during their customary debrief. But he had still been so busy harboring hurt feelings over Michonne's perceived betrayal that he hadn't pursued it further. Now he had no way of locating the old woman if Lady didn't know who he was talking about.

"They'd been burned out," Maggie added then looking up at Rick. "She didn't tell me about this, but if what they did to Ariane's mother is an indication, then I know I'm right."

Lady seemed to think about it for a moment before answering. She nodded placing a finger over her pursed lips. She said something quietly to Mathilde.

"She knows her but she's sick. Very sick now. Her niece doesn't know if she's going to make it," Their translator explained somberly.

Rick heart sank but Lady pat his hand encouragingly.

"...But she says she'll see if the niece will let us speak with her anyway," Mathilde spoke to him for her.

The woman continued, she spoke quickly and even Mathilde had trouble keeping up as Swahili was not her first language. "She says... you can't call on her now since she is not feeling well... You must stay the night…. And we'll visit her first thing tomorrow morning—"

"Please tell her we'd be grateful if we could call on her this evening," Rick insisted interrupting Mathilde.

Mathilde tried to translate the message but the woman shook her head vigorously cutting her off shortly...as Rick had. A part of him felt sorry for Mathilde having to act as go-between for two obviously forceful personalities.

"She said no, we must wait until morning. It would be unforgivably rude to bother a sick old woman at this time of evening," Mathilde reported.

There was clearly no use in trying to re-emphasize the time-sensitivity of their mission. Rick could see the woman's expression close to further discussion. Rick sighed. As the hours passed, Carter became increasingly right in his estimation of Rick's efforts...and mistakes.

"Fine. We'll billet here," He told Samir and Barnes, as they came up to him, deliberately ignoring Carter. The two men walked off to ready their sleeping accommodations.

"Maggie can stay in my tent with me," Amy said warmly as she left to thank all the women in the tent individually for their assistance.

Rick sighed. If this old woman didn't have any usable information, they'd have lost valuable time —and found themselves at a dead end.

Maggie put her hand on Rick's forearm. "Shane wouldn't hurt her. I know him. The man I love would never do this."

Rick wanted to believe that. A part of him did believe it. But increasingly, another part of him recognized that they didn't really know what Shane was thinking. This wasn't the man he'd grown up with, that Maggie was in love with. This was someone else entirely. And in a part of Rick that he still didn't want to fully acknowledge, he recognized he didn't know what that man was capable of at all.


	48. Chapter 48

* **Author's Note** *

Merry Christmas to everyone who observes! Thank you so much for all the well wishes. I'm still relatively sick but I don't quite feel like Typhoid Mary anymore so that's an improvement. Thank you also to anyone who moseyed on over to Tumblr's Richonne Just Desserts blog and checked out their _25 Days of Richonne_ Event this December. As you probably already know, I wrote Day 8 and Day 22 but every day is chock full of Richonne Holiday goodness! Today is the last day of new stories. Which means if you haven't already, today's the perfect day to cozy up with your favorite hot beverage, comfy socks, warm blanket and partake in 25 days worth of sheer delight, LOL! HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYBODY! xoxo Iminyjo

7/28/15 11:31 GMT  
Initial Descent - 14,000 ft. above sea level (167mi southwest of Aberdeen, Scotland)

"We were told the facility is seven miles from the air strip. I figure hoofing it, we should be able to get there in about forty-five minutes," Rick said confidently to Daryl.

"With her in tow?"

Rick stood at the cockpit door whispering with Daryl but he turned then to look in the direction his companion gestured to see the infected doctor fitfully writhing on the gurney she was strapped to.

She'd woken up, Rick had noticed earlier with dismay. Since then, the doctor had spent long minutes tending to her as she struggled against her bindings. Currently, Mamet stood near her checking her heart rate. Rick didn't like him that close, preferring that he just shoot her up with more sedatives and be done with it. But, as Milton reminded him, they needed to get her there alive. Accidentally overdosing her on the powerful cocktail of tranquilizers they had her on was still very much a possibility.

"Doctor, be careful," Rick called out across the cabin. He couldn't help saying it even while feeling like a nag. He resented having to remind a grown man, yet again, how dangerous these creatures were. But then he remembered Mamet had still never dealt with one on equal footing. He still honestly had no idea what they were capable of.

With a sigh, he turned back to Dixon. "I don't know that she's necessarily going to be the thing that slows us down."

Daryl shrugged and in his gruff voice commiserated. "Listen, if things're as quiet in Aberdeen as those Who-people said, maybe it won't even matter."

Rick chuckled unexpectedly at the sudden image Daryl had provided him of Dr. Seuss' Whoville-ians decked out in lab coats and Christmas hats before reality hit him again harshly. Experience had taught Rick that no, the likelihood of cheerful doctors or even an uneventful transfer were slim. Still, if the most morose guy on their team could bring himself to utter a sentiment of hope, maybe, Rick considered, he should allow room for the possibility. He knew Michonne was relying on him to think positively and return to her whole. And he didn't particularly have a problem with that objective either.

"Oh Fuck!" Daryl exclaimed breaking into Rick's quiet brooding and startling him. The Lance Corporal eyes grew wide as he scrambled past him into the cabin. And Rick turned right as someone screamed. The sound was blood-curdling.

Dr. Maitland was upright on her gurney having broken through two of her four restraints. Only her left arm and right ankle kept her off Mamet but he was already bleeding from a gaping wound in his cheek. In the time it took the two men to run across the cabin toward him and Rovia to struggle with the infected doctor, Milton had pulled the service weapon he'd been given from his waist. Time seemed to slow to a crawl and as much as he wanted to, Rick couldn't cover the distance to the panicked doctor fast enough.

"Doc, no!" Daryl shouted, reaching to assist Jesus.

"Milton, not in here!" Rick shouted angrily at the same moment, rushing him at him.

Before Rick could reach to stop him, Mamet squeezed the trigger on the semi-automatic with his eyes closed. He let off four rapid shots that went wild pulled astray by the unexpected kickback. Two, amazingly, hit their target but one shot hit one of the double-paned windows behind them cracking it. The entire cabin trembled as the air pressure cracked it further. It was going give any minute. Rick staggered forward unsteadily as the plane rocked.

"WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON BACK THERE? ARE THOSE GUNSHOTS?" Carol called through the overhead PA alarmed.

"Milton, stop!" Rick moved in on the doctor, slapping a hand heavily over the one of his holding the gun and pushing it toward the floor. Another two shots rang out as Milton held down the trigger. Mamet's finger remained on the trigger even as Rick tried to pry it out of his hands. The sound of bullets ricocheting through the cabin punctuated Rick's words. Seeing no other option, Rick clocked him with a right hook and elbow shot that felled him immediately. Milton's glasses snapped in half as his head slapped against the metal wall. He fell into an unconscious heap at Rick's feet.

"FUCK!" Rick roared, looking down at the doctor. He turned to assess the damage.

Dr. Maitland gasped weakly, splayed across her gurney. Two large red spots bloomed across her blue dress, spreading from her gut to chest as she snapped blindly at an invisible foe. She remained bound to the gurney by one foot and one arm restraint, but she reached for Rick as he passed her nevertheless. Quickly but with a tenderness that shocked even him, Rick took her outstretched hand and bound it back into its restraint. Surprisingly, she put up very little resistance.

Behind her on the floor, Daryl was on the ground cradling Rovia's head in his hands. Seeing that, Rick rushed over to them and dropped to his knees, grabbing the young man's hand. Jesus' other hand covered a hole in the side of his throat as dark red blood oozed out from between his fingers.

"Geezus!" Rick exclaimed and Rovia smiled limply, blood staining his teeth.

"I grow on you, right?" He rasped.

"Yeah, like VD." Daryl chuckled huskily despite himself, shaking his head.

"Paul, don't talk. Keep pressure on it." Rick instructed covering Jesus' hand firmly with one of his own. The reedy, gasping noise of a deflating tire that was coming from his mouth lessened slightly.

"Corporal, tell Carol to get this thing on the ground now before we fall out of the sky." He commanded Daryl.

The whole cabin rattled again to punctuate Rick's words. The sound of a slow hissing whine indicated air was trying to escape, adding to the urgency of his words. Daryl looked at Jesus downcast, easing his head on to the pillow of tarp he pulled from behind him. He put a hand to Jesus' shoulder and squeezed it meaningfully as he got to his feet. He ran for the cockpit on unsteady legs.

Rick held Rovia's neck squeezed tightly but he could see he was losing too much blood, too quickly for anything to be done. The bullet must have nicked his jugular vein, Rick surmised dolefully. Jesus stared up at Rick with his big, blue, solemn eyes. They held the knowing look of someone who understood their time was drawing to a close. But as had become usual, Jesus smiled beatifically as blood seeped from the corner on his mouth.

"Captain," he whispered even as Rick tried to hush him. His voice was thick with fluid as free-flowing blood filled his pipes and he choked on it. He spoke between painful, hacking coughs, "My family in D.C. If this works, if they're still there...tell them. Tell them I helped. I tried."

Rick nodded. "Don't talk. I'll find them. I'll tell them."

Jesus shook his head faintly. "No, no tell them, the _fag_ helped save the world." He gurgled. "Tell 'em like that, and that I did it for them.'"

"I will," Rick said holding back the tears gathering in his eyes.

"Just like I said it, now. Don't forget. I want—" Jesus' eyes fixed on a spot beyond Rick's face and his voice trailed off.

"Goddamn it!" Rick exclaimed with abject frustration to himself and the empty space around him as Jesus gave one final shuddering exhale.

Just then, a groaning sound not unlike the bending and twisting of steel resounded through the cabin. The glass pane cracked more, starting to resemble an intricate spider's web before giving way entirely. Crushing, freezing cold air rushed the cabin as it depressurized. Rick heard the piercing cabin pressure alert sound in the cockpit as the floor fell out from beneath him. The whole plane careened heavily left, pitching him off his feet and up against the ceiling. Rovia and Mamet slid along the floor limbless as he hit the metal wall hard. Both Rick's head and shoulder exploded in blinding white pain before a sudden darkness.

* * *

"Doc, are you sure you're alright?" Rick struggled with one hand to strap Milton into a jump seat. Despite the fact that he was fairly sure he was more bruised and battered than the doctor, Rick was willing to give him a pass, as groggily half-conscious, Mamet was of no use strapping himself in.

Five minutes earlier, when he opened his own eyes, slid back down the wall and onto the floor as the plane leveled off, Rick inventoried the scene. He'd blacked out for barely seconds and yet chaos had reigned in the interim. Jesus' body lay thrown against the opposite wall like an abandoned husk. Dr. Maitland was also dead, her gurney overturned with her crushed underneath it, body bent unnaturally and her dead eyes fixed on the ceiling. From his place sprawled across the floor, Rick looked for Mamet and quickly found him. He realized then what had been plainly obvious when all the drama began. A wide trail of blood marked the doctor's journey across the cabin as his unconscious body slid from one side of the floor to the other. Milton had been bitten— badly.

"Shit," Rick muttered to himself.

He lifted himself shakily off the floor. But even thinking about standing made him feel woozy. So he tried to crawl over to Milton. Rick clenched his teeth to stop himself from gasping in pain. His left shoulder sat at an odd angle inches behind where it should be on a human body and just turning his head hurt. He could barely move that entire arm. Nevertheless, he inched across the floor on his haunches, similar to the way he'd seen Judith do in her preparation for walking. As he passed it, he pulled the first aid kit from the trauma bag that sat feet from him, half its contents strewn across the cabin. By rights, Milton should have been raving and frothing at the mouth by now. In point of fact he should have turned in just the few moments it had taken Rovia to die. The fact that neither he nor Daryl had thought to put him down before then, sent a shiver down Rick's spine. They'd both been distracted. They'd had their backs to him attending to their fallen comrade. He could have pounced on them both and they'd have been powerless to stop him.

 _Christ, Intervention 247, or whatever it is, really was almost it...or fucking close_ , he realized.

Rick moved closer to Milton cautiously pulling his Colt, that he'd gotten back from Michonne, from his holster. He was hopeful, not stupid. He nudged Milton's back slightly with the muzzle.

"Doctor?" He pushed the gun harder into the man's back. "Doctor?"

Milton groaned. "Help," he muttered from the twilight between consciousness and not.

Rick exhaled heavily. Milton was still human, whatever else he also was notwithstanding. He flipped Mamet's body over clumsily with his one good arm and then applied a gauze pad to the wound on his cheek. He'd lost a lot of blood but the bleeding had slowed significantly. He cleaned the wound by dousing it with copious amounts of alcohol to see it more carefully. Mamet moaned fretfully but otherwise did not yet rouse. The imprint of nearly a full set of 32 teeth was visible across the side of his face. Rick put clean gauze over it and struggled to tape it securely in place with one hand.

"She got us low enough to pressurize the cabin." Daryl said opening the cockpit door. He'd smartly closed it when he left them to attend to Carol. "Geezus," he said under his breath as he surveyed the scene.

He wasn't wrong. The whole cabin was a mess with dead or unconscious bodies thrown around like discarded ragdolls. Blood and all sorts of things covered the cabin floor. Rick looked up at him from his moment lost in thought.

"Help get him up and strapped in securely. I don't want him getting loose," he instructed.  
Daryl walked up to them and gathered Mamet under his arms.

"Stay clear of his mouth," Rick warned quietly as he pulled himself finally to his feet. He wobbled a bit and Daryl dropped Milton into a seat quickly to come back and attend to him.

"No," Rick said holding up his good hand to stay him. "Don't worry about me. We need him strapped in before he wakes up."

Rick got his sealegs rapidly and the swaying ceased. He joined Daryl at the jump seat assisting in buckling him in as Daryl positioned his body. Milton groggily came out of his haze of unconsciousness. He swatted at their hands.

"What are you doing?" He asked before his eyes had even opened completely.

"We're strappin' you in, Doc." Daryl answered with surprising gentleness.

"How you doin', Milton?" Rick called to him loudly as the doctor's eyes were still closed and he spoke with a dreamy quality. He was still struggling in the twilight.

"I'm okay. What happened?" Milton asked innocently, in the tone a child might have. Daryl looked up at Rick and then around at Dr. Maitland and Rovia. Rick nodded and Daryl left them to attend to the scene.

Rick put the buckles into their respective latches awkwardly with his one good hand as Milton's eyes finally opened.

"I can't see," he observed. "Rick?"

"'Cuz you broke your glasses, Doctor," Rick answered easily tugging on the straps to make sure they were secure.

"What happened?" Milton asked again.

"Just take a breath, Milton. How do you feel…"

* * *

Carol had been forced to put the plane down at the main airport instead of the airstrip they'd planned to use. That difference put them roughly thirty miles from their destination instead of seven. Luckily, to everyone's surprise, the airport was quite small with only one main terminal. It probably had never been as busy as Incirlik on its best day. She taxied the plane easily to the far end of the runway near the apron and turned off the engine.

"Okay, we jump out, get the lay of the land, get some fuel into this big bitch and we'll be ready to go," She announced coming out of the cockpit stretching.

"God Almighty," she gasped upon finally seeing the condition of the cabin. Daryl had no doubt warned her but it clearly hadn't been enough, by the look on her face. She looked around, her eyes lingering on the tarp under which both Jesus and Dr. Maitland's bodies lay.

"Are y'all okay?"

She looked at Rick and then at Milton with concern. Milton was silent. He'd been despondent since he was told what had happened. Rick watched Daryl walk up to her and say something under his breath with his back to him. He leaned into Carol and she listened intently before nodding.

"Okay, Cap," She said decisively, clapping her hands together and snapping her fingers at the same time to emphasize her words. "Let's get you fixed up."

"I'm okay," Rick said weakly sitting two seats from Milton in an unclasped harness.

"Okay, then lemme see," Carol said coming up to him. He noticed she gave Milton a wide berth when moving around him to Rick's position.

Rick pushed the harness off his shoulders gingerly and got to his feet unsteadily. Every time he stood up, he felt briefly like he might pass out from the pain.

"I think I broke my shoulder, that's all. There's nothing Daryl could do about it, I doubt you can either. We just need to get to the facility. Maybe they'll have a sling or something."

Carol listened to him absently, focusing instead on his injury. She reached for him and Rick slunk back reflexively which brought tears to his eyes, the pain was so intense.

"That's all, huh?" She looked at him rolling her eyes and sucked her teeth impatiently. "I'm gonna be touching you whether you like it or not, so try not to move this time, Captain."

Carol slid her hand gently over the plane of Rick's shoulder feeling the muscles. He winced, even that was excruciating. "Okay, Daryl's right. It's not broken. It's dislocated."

"Tell me again which medical school you and the Corporal went to, Lieutenant?" Rick asked testily as the pain made him sweaty and irritable.

"I didn't need medical school. I had a husband who liked to do this to me for fun all the time. Made me a frequent flyer at the emergency room. Got to the point, I couldn't show my face in any ER for three counties..."

Carol spoke matter-of-factly as she slipped her arm carefully into Rick's arm pit. Rick looked at Daryl as she spoke, the man seethed. He looked around at the ground and crossed his arms tightly as if he wanted to keep himself from punching someone. Rick wanted to kick himself that he hadn't picked up on it before. The Lance Corporal was in love with the Lieutenant. He'd been so preoccupied he'd somehow missed the fact that her safety was always Dixon's primary concern. Rick hadn't even noticed until that moment that Daryl stayed permanently at her side unless duty required otherwise. Rick suddenly felt oblivious, and quite possibly like the worst CO in Christendom to have missed something so obvious.

"...He dotes on our kid but he didn't like me too tough..." Carol spoke the truth of her life just as plainly as revealing her own name. Then without warning, as Rick stood lulled by the calm in her voice, she tightened her grip on his arm, pulling it up, then in a rotating motion jerking it downward, quick and hard.

The pain was so sharp and unexpected, Rick actually saw stars form in front of his eyes for a second. But it was too fast to even cry out. Then just as quickly it was gone. Nearly all the intense pain that had kept him slightly hunched over and made even moving his jaw to speak hurt, vanished.

"Better?" She asked patting his shoulder comfortingly.

He nodded.

"It's gonna be sore for a bit. If they have an x-ray there, I'd still do it, your bicep is swollen which says there could be something more going on, but you should be fine for now." She offered him something from her pocket before she stepped away from him. He looked down into his hand: pills. "Take those now."

"Carol, thank you," Rick said exhaling with relief. Carol waved him off as if the sentiment was not only unnecessary but ridiculous. Rick popped the pills into his mouth and swallowed.

"You wait here and figure out what we're gonna do about the doctor. We'll organize the refuel. We may not have the opportunity or the time to do this on the way back and it looks pretty good out there right now," she replied.

"I'll help."

"Cap, for once, just siddown. We got it. It's cloudy. Gonna rain any minute. We'll be good," Daryl said surprising Rick with his assertiveness. He hardly ever spoke, much less to give orders. Rick sat down as directed. He needed to have a talk with Milton anyway.

"Set your watch. We'll be back in 90 minutes. Any more than that and you both leave without us," Carol instructed.

Rick didn't like the idea of splitting up, not again. They'd already learned the hard way that that strategy didn't always work, but once again they'd been left with little choice. Mamet was likely to be either a burden or a liability if he came with them and until the anti-inflammatory pain pills kicked in and Rick had regained his full range of motion, he was unlikely to be all that much better.

He set his watch and looked up at them. "You've got 89 minutes and 57, 56, 55 seconds, to get your asses back here, Lieutenant. Don't be late."

The two marines saluted him and then set forth.

* * *

Milton Mamet wiped tears from his eyes as Rick spoke. He was a grown man but there was a boyish quality to both his look and demeanor that saddened Rick. _This_ , this place, this mission, was no place for a man like him. He was too fragile for this.

"I still can't believe I did that," Milton muttered yet again, unbelieving as he looked down at the tarp covering the bodies. His voice was garbled by the wound and the large amount of gauze bandaging Carol had wrapped around his head that kept him from doing much more than speaking through his teeth.

Rick looked on grimly. The knock on the head from when Rick slugged him had, no doubt temporarily, robbed Milton of the last five minutes of the incident. He didn't remember grabbing the Beretta Daryl gave him or pulling the trigger repeatedly or having to have Rick wrestle it from his hand as he fired blindly. He was having difficulty coming to terms with having killed Mr. Rovia... or Dr. Maitland for that matter, and the larger implications of that.

Which was really what Rick needed clarity on.

"Doctor, what do we do now?" Rick asked the man again. He was still intent on taking the woman's body to the facility but already he knew there would be little that could be done with it once they got there.

Milton seemed to be in his own world. He continued staring off into space with tears streaking his face as he digested what he'd been told. He very carefully touched the bandaged wound on his face repeatedly, seemingly as a self-soothing mechanism.

"Milton?" Rick repeated trying to get his attention. "Milton?"

He snapped his fingers in front of Mamet's face to grab his attention. He startled at Rick's movement, coming back to earth. "What?"

"I said what are we gonna do? We can still take the body, but aren't the viruses in her dead now that she is?" Rick wasn't certain he understood all the ins and outs but he was fairly sure he'd gotten that part. A dead body was useless.

"Oh yeah, she's useless," Mamet said absently echoing Rick's thoughts exactly. "We might as well bury her."

Rick slouched with a heavy sigh, deflated to be right. This is not what he left half his team and Michonne for. Not to have gotten here and have nothing but his dick in his hands. There was nothing to do and no one to really be angry with. The doctor panicked as all people would have, given the situation. Honestly, if there was someone to blame, Rick would have to blame himself for even allowing Milton to be armed in the first place. On a plane no less, it was a stupid, _stupid_ , rookie mistake. He'd just completely forgotten that Milton had the piece at all. Milton said something else then but Rick was too busy beating himself up to hear it.  
"What did you say, Doctor?" He looked at Milton finally, who looked as lost and dejected as he felt.

"We don't need her anymore anyway."

"How do you figure?" Rick asked intrigued.

"Well, because you have me. And I'm infected now too."


	49. Chapter 49

May 9th 2011

Location Unknown, DRC

Michonne noticed after Ngangabouka's visit she was granted a greater degree of freedom. Her world expanded beyond being confined to the small room in what she'd begun to think of as "the big house". It wasn't as if she'd lost her constant shadow, François, but he'd become more like a stone-faced, hostile bodyguard and less like a jailer. She was allowed to spend the entire day after Ngangabouka left with Ariane in a small garden the girl kept behind the building. Then that evening, Michonne ate with her and other women in a section of the banquet hall that women were for some reason prescribed to instead of alone in her room.

...And that was precisely where she was when Shane burst into the small gymnasium and brought nearly every other conversation in the hall to an abrupt halt.

For Michonne, seeing his face was disorienting and incongruent with her new reality. But it was Shane, pushing through the heavy double doors and marching to the front of the room where Dwight ate with his cohort. As he moved, Michonne found herself rising out of her seat, even as Ariane grabbed her hand and begged her not to move. If there was any truth to the relationship she thought they once had, he would be surprised to see her. He would explain that this was all a big misunderstanding.

Intellectually, she knew that couldn't be true. She knew that his connection to Rick didn't make her any safer. Still, she couldn't fight the sudden feeling. In her gut, in an almost Pavlovian way, seeing him made her feel as if Rick was nearby and that made her safer. It made her feel like her freedom was at hand. All previous news to the contrary, seeing him inexplicably filled her with the hope that this had all been a terrible mistake. But the expression on his face when he searched the room and his eyes finally connected with hers, told her nothing could be further from the truth. Ariane had not lied to her. And as much as it pained her to admit it, Ngangabouka had not misled her either.

Shane was not to be her salvation, he was in actual fact the author of her doom.

"Shane?" She said quietly, moving away from Ariane and the women she sat with to follow him. At her distance, he couldn't hear her but he watched her approach with hard eyes.

"Dwight man, this is NOT what we agreed to," Shane spat out angrily standing before the long table Dwight sat behind. Michonne could hear him as she grew closer.

"We had an agreement. You promised to take care of this! She wasn't supposed to still be here. What amateur-hour bullshit are you guys running, huh? What are you doing?" He turned back toward Dwight and asked, irate.

Shane looked strangely disheveled and distraught. He spoke with a rapid, manic cadence that made him seem unstable. Nothing but his features suggested the man Michonne thought she knew. Yet, pulled by an uncontrollable urge, Michonne came all the way up to the front of the room where he was.

"Eh? You are very bad with promises, Walsh. You promise DaDa you would become head man at the UN and you are not. You promise smooth moving of his property and now, no," Dwight said dismissively in his poor English.

Shane shot a strangely guilty glance at Michonne that she didn't think she understood. But she realized then she didn't quite understand a lot of what was happening. Never in her wildest imaginings did she think this man would be capable of the level of treachery he was displaying. Despite her misgivings about their marriage and her recent more serious suspicions, deep down, Michonne had never really thought ill of Shane, never thought him truly unworthy of her friend. Even at the height of her mistrust of him, she thought his actions were more the result of his being an overgrown man-child than any actual malice. She thought he was a scheming, and somewhat selfish cad, nothing more. The person standing before her now, she realized, was a different creature entirely. One she did not know at all. That realization frightened her.

"Quit lookin' at me like that!" He snapped at her sharply and she flinched as she stood before him.

"How do you want me to look at you, Shane?" She asked with surprisingly more calm than she thought she possessed. She still hoped to possibly appeal to the man she thought she knew.

"Don't Shane me. What happened to 'Frack', huh?" He turned his full attention on her suddenly ignoring the other people in the room as if they'd melted away. "Where's that sassy mouth, huh?"

Michonne inadvertently backed into a pillar surprised as Shane stalked over to her.

"Always had so much to say," he barked.

Suddenly, he cornered her, reaching for her face by the chin and covering her mouth roughly with his palm. Her cheek and lip still hurt where Dwight had punched her. She grabbed at his hand in shock.

 _Who was this person?_

Michonne looked around to see if anyone cared about what he was doing. As she had already witnessed, assault was an everyday occurrence here, and no one did anything more than watch things unfold.

Shane held her fast as if he planned to lift her off her feet by her jaw alone. She slapped at him and his outstretched hand with her other hand as his fingertips dug into her face.

"Thinkin' you were so much smarter than everybody. Thinkin' you were so much better than everybody. Lookin' down your nose at people, at me. Tryin' to convince Maggie she was wasting her time with me. Thinkin' me an' Rick were just a couple of bumpkins you could boss around. Rick could never see it. As far as he was concerned, the sun always shined outta your asshole," Shane spewed the venomous words in her face while her mouth was locked closed by his tightening hand.

Michonne had no clue Shane had clung to all these petty resentments, but she could see now that they fueled him.

"Got him over here twisted around your little finger. Lori deserves so much better'n that. To be callin' me, asking me what's goin' on with Rick. Beggin' me to get him to come home. And for what? He can't see it, but I know. You couldn't care less about him, about me...it's just pathetic!"

As he pulled her closer, she could more clearly see the tender swelling under his eye and the blood-shot red of broken capillaries there. In an hour or so, he'd be black and blue. There were cuts in his eyebrow, cheekbone and on the bridge of his nose. The smell of whiskey on his breath and the stink of sweat on his body told an unflattering story of his last few hours.

His other hand came around then and gripped Michonne by the side of the neck, squeezing tightly from both directions. Her hand closed over his trying to pry his fingers away as he choked her.

Ariane screamed from her place behind François as Michonne flailed, sliding up the column as her feet threatened to actually leave the ground. True fear gripped her as she slapped wildly at Shane's face and arms. But he smiled the more she struggled, his grip growing tighter.

"Rick could never see what a smug, entitled, spiteful little bitch you were, but I could. I always could. And that's why you've never ever liked me. Couldn't stand that I could see right through your bullshit."

Michonne had never seen such unmitigated hate in anyone's eyes before. Not just his actions but his words terrified her. Taking an opportunity that presented itself as she struggled in his surprisingly strong grasp, she bit him. Sinking her teeth into the fleshy space between his thumb and his index finger while it covered her mouth. She kicked at his crotch and while she missed the mark in her panic, she came close enough.

"Muthafuckin' bitch!" Shane screamed and flung her back into the pillar behind her. The pain radiated through her as she slumped down onto the floor.

She hit the ground hard, slamming against the cold, smooth concrete as she landed crumpled on her side. Shane pulled out his pistol cocking the hammer and pointing it at her. She held up a hand reflexively to shield herself.

"No!" Dwight interjected swiftly. *Now, you know DaDa does not approve of that, Mr. Walsh. He has first right of refusal of every woman who enters the compound and he hasn't decided what to do with her yet. You pull that trigger and you might as well shoot yourself next.*

Shane seemed to suddenly realize other people were there, watching. He paused, glaring at her on the ground. Then he looked back at Dwight standing up from his seat, a few feet away. Michonne could see the wheels turning in his head. Always the impulsive one, she could tell he was debating shooting her anyway and then just suffering the consequences. The Shane she knew had always thought being forgiven was preferable to asking for permission. And the rage in his eyes was murderous enough right then to not even care about either. Still, he slowly uncocked his weapon and replaced it in his holster. Pulling a small bandana out of his back pocket, he wrapped it around his hand.

Ariane shrugged the man holding her off and rushed to Michonne, helping her back to her feet. She glared at Shane.

*Are you alright?* She asked Michonne under her breath in French.

*I will be.* Michonne answered shaken.

After years of thinking herself a good, maybe even excellent, judge of character, she felt foolish for having had no clue Shane felt that way about her. For not seeing that he was this type of person. She'd always thought they were friends. Uneasy, somewhat begrudging friends. Made so by all the people they had in common, instead of what they personally had in common, but still fundamentally friends nonetheless. The furious expression on Shane's face told her nothing could have been further from the truth. It also helped to reveal what a truly masterful liar he was. It was no wonder Rick had never had cause to suspect him of anything.

*Careful, you don't want her to lose her baby.* Dwight announced spitefully.

Michonne's stomach felt as if it did a full flip. Ariane's hand tightened around her arm as she stiffened involuntarily.

Shane turned his attention away from glaring at her.

*Her what?* He asked Dwight in his awkward French. Though, like Michonne, he understood it perfectly well, it was a rare occasion when he dared to speak it. *What did you just say?*

*Oh, had she not shared her happy news with you yet?* Dwight explained in a tone that indicated he believed it about as much as Shane would. *She's pregnant.*

Shane's eyes narrowed briefly before he broke out in a laugh. "Unless this is the fuckin' Immaculate Conception, there's no way she's pregnant. With whose baby?"

"Stay calm," Ariane whispered under her breath with a calculated ease.

Fear mingled suddenly with indignation in Michonne's chest. "Why do you think you have the right to know the ins and outs of my love life?" She declared.

"What love life?" Shane said in the casually mocking tone he always took with her. As if they'd suddenly reverted back to the relationship she thought they had. He even smirked at her.

Michonne wondered then if he might actually be a sociopath. If so, he was in good company. Water always finds its level, her grandmother had told her time and again as a child. It was certainly true between Shane Walsh and DaDa Ngangabouka.

"Who do you think you're kidding? You aren't even seeing anyone." Shane looked away from her around the room. "Have any of you idiots thought to give her a pregnancy test?"

Dwight pursed his lips as if the whole conversation had become distasteful. "We have."

Shane looked shocked when no one's expression changed. He approached her again, for which she had to brace herself. But instead of attacking her, he peered into her face looking from side to side as if he could suss out the truth from her expression alone.

"Who?" He had the nerve to ask her, seeming genuinely curious. "Carter, that fuckin' anal-retentive jag-off?"

The idea seemed to both amuse and disgust him simultaneously. Inexplicably, his disdain irritated her.

She refused to answer, exerting the one piece of control over her circumstance that she still had. Shane stepped even closer, grabbing her arm roughly and pulling her toward him and away from everyone else as she attempted to step back. Ariane began to object but just a glance from him over Michonne's shoulder, shut the girl up. Dwight watched them carefully but didn't speak as Shane's fingers tightened around Michonne's bicep. He brought her even closer until they were nearly nose to nose. A sudden panic filled his eyes as he looked at her that she couldn't decipher until he spoke.

"Rick?" He tried again quietly, just for her ears.

As if it were truly possible for Shane to surprise her further even after all that had just transpired between them, an actual flash of remorse crossed his face then. Seeing that, Michonne slapped him as hard as she could manage. The harsh sound of skin touching skin echoed loudly in the room. For a change, many people jumped in surprise. It happened so quickly it could almost have been called a reflex.

Shane surprised her by smiling in reaction. He touched a hand to his mouth to check the small trickle of blood that seeped from the corner. Then he chuckled at her insolence, releasing her.

"Well, I owe you both an apology, clearly. I had no idea," He marveled as she stepped back and away from him with her hand aching. "...that you were actually givin' him some trim. Sly girl. Knowing that makes y'all's relationship a fraction less pathetic than I always thought it was."

Michonne glared, resisting the urge to slap him again for his crudeness. She also resisted trying to play upon the one glimpse of humanity he'd briefly exhibited. Besides which, if the prospect that she was carrying Rick's child was the only thing that might encourage him to spare her life, she knew there was nothing left to be said.

As if in confirmation, not a minute later, Michonne's "baby's" paternity ceased to be a source of concern for him. "So what are you waiting for?" He turned away from her to ask Dwight and the group at large.

This Shane Walsh disgusted her, and she had trouble hiding that fact on her face.

"Don't tell me you morons are really planning to wait nine months?" Shane turned and directed the question to Dwight impatiently. "I need her gone yesterday!"

That had to mean Rick was looking for her, she hoped. That Shane was trying to cover his tracks. Michonne stifled the amused smile that itched at the corners of her lips. That could explain Shane's level of agitation when he arrived and found her still there too.

It also explained why Shane looked so thoroughly fucked up. Michonne realized with amusement.

*We're waiting for whatever DaDa says we're waiting for, Mr. Walsh. She is our concern now, not yours. You have no say in what happens here. Focus on giving us the items we pay you a hefty sum for.*

"You're profiteering," Michonne blurted out the pieces finally coming together for her.

"Shut up, Bitch," Shane snapped angrily.

"You and Ngangabouka thought killing Caleb Subramanian would smooth the way for your business. You thought they'd make you the Security Chief after him and then there would be no one to ask any questions about the items moving through the warehouses. But they gave that job to Rick instead."

Michonne had always wondered at the odd circumstances surrounding the assassination of Rick's predecessor. It had always seemed like a crime of opportunity with no rhyme or reason to it. The Security Director's job was mainly just ensuring the safety and security of the Mission itself, the staff within and its resources. Strategically, Caleb's death was minimally helpful at destabilizing Mission operations. To do that, Matt or Stavros would have made for better targets for Ngangabouka. If that was even something he wanted to do. In truth, it only served to further blacken his name in the diplomatic community. A place where she'd heard through the grapevine that he actually craved legitimacy as a "liberator". Overall, it just seemed like an immensely bold move for very little seeming return on investment.

Or so she had thought.

Shane looked back at her. "If you were half as smart as you always think you are, you'd just shut your mouth. Rick didn't ask any questions anyway, did he?"

No, Shane was right, he could have but he didn't. Finally, disparate dots were starting to come together and connect for her. She did.

Despite the initial snag, Shane and Ngangabouka's plan had managed to work out anyway. As Rick's right hand, it had been as if he'd gotten the Security Chief job anyway. Michonne knew, as everyone did, Rick relied on Shane to help keep all the trains running on time. Rick trusted all the members of his security protection team, having either hand-picked them for their jobs or from having worked with them previously at other missions. But it still wasn't like with Shane. He trusted Shane, his childhood friend, without reservation. He would never have questioned his activities. And he would not even be able to fathom a betrayal of this magnitude. The thought of it made her sick. Michonne knew in fact, 'betrayal' was probably not even an adequate word for this level of deceit. Regardless, she realized then, with what she now knew this was truly the end of the road for her.

So she decided to go for broke.

"Who's Lausanne?" she asked shamelessly.

Shane blinked in confusion.

*Don't you mean 'where'?* Dwight corrected looking from her to Shane.

 _Where?_

*It sounds like she's not quite as informed as you led us to believe, Walsh. DaDa won't be pleased to hear you've just got him doing your dirty work for you.* Dwight remarked, tsking.

That would have meant something if it had been true, but Shane looked as surprised by her question as she felt by Dwight's admission.

Where? Michonne repeated to herself trying swiftly to connect the information like they were the shattered pieces of a picture she desperately needed to see. Lausanne was not a woman but a place.

 _A place?_ She chided herself for having missed the glaringly obvious.

Shane was watching her nervously. He watched as the gears shifted in her mind closing in on the answer.

Why would the name of that city be written on the back of an old matchbook? And what were those numbers? Ten digits, not a phone number… _Of course!_

 _Lausanne_ , Michonne realized, was actually a city on Lake Geneva. She remembered that from her brief time stationed at UN headquarters. It was a relatively small city in Switzerland with only two things of note, it was the home of both the International Olympic Committee and a rather large national bank. The Bank of Lausanne, which would make the numbers in the matchbook Maggie found...a _Swiss bank account._

Michonne's eyes widened as the truth flowed over her at the same time Shane's narrowed with murderous intent. She finally knew what was going on. He looked simultaneously guilty and agitated. Shane took a deep breath and swallowed. Michonne could see his Adam's apple bob in his throat as he seemed to be marshaling his nerve.

"Am I really gonna have to kill this bitch myself?" Shane shouted suddenly reaching for his holstered weapon again.

Michonne knew he meant to use it this time, consequences be damned. She braced herself the best she could, pushing Ariane further away from where she stood by her side. Just then, François appeared with his assault rifle already aimed at Shane's head.

The young man had, prior to this, been the bane of her existence but for one shining moment, he was her savior. Michonne nearly laughed at the ludicrous irony of it.

*You forget yourself, Walsh. You are a guest here.* A voice said behind her.

Michonne turned and saw Mama Oné moving through the full room. Everything seemed to fall silent and still around her, similar to when their master was around. Normally, it unsettled Michonne. For once, she viewed it with the awe it was supposed to inspire.

"So, he's got his mamma handling his affairs for him now? What the hell is this? Where's Negan?"

Oné made a face filled with loathing. Shane seemed to be eliciting that reaction from many people now.

"I hate that white man name. Here, we are all Ngangabouka. And believe I speak for him when I say that if you try and pull that weapon out one more time, I will make for certain that the bullet it holds is for you."


	50. Chapter 50

* **Author's Note** *

Happy New Year! Thanks for sticking with me. We are definitely past the hump (aka midway point) in this story. We're getting to the nitty gritty now and I really appreciate your patience with all my twists and turns. I don't know honestly if I have another one of these monsters in me but if I do, I'll only write it for you guys! You make it so worth it with your commentary and ideas! Hope 2018 provides us all with everything we need to replenish and nourish us year-round!

7/28/15 18:56 CAT  
Medical Station Omicron, Rwanda

"Ms. Philippe, we can always bring your food to you?" Glenn said sounding a lot like Denise as he attended Michonne and Sasha like a personal bodyguard.

She paused and looked over at him standing on the other side of Sasha. She hadn't said anything when not long after she and Sasha set off together he'd turned up and proceeded to follow them around like a lost puppy. She remained quiet as she discovered he talked more than she and Sasha combined. Enough to fill all the silences in their conversation and create new conversations of his own. He was acting on Rick's orders she reasoned. But if he planned to turn from companionable to paternalistic, Michonne knew she was going to have to speak on it.

Fortunately for him, he seemed to read at least some of that in her expression. "...Or not, Miss Philippe, I mean, Michonne."

"Michonne," she had corrected him three times over the course of their afternoon spent exploring and he didn't seem any closer to getting it organically than he had been the first time. "Glenn, I'm completely capable of having dinner in the dining room with all the rest of you."

He stammered for a moment.

"I think he was just saying that you don't have to be subjected to it, if you don't want to be." Sasha offered looking between the two of them.

Glenn nodded. "Yes. I mean it's hardly fun for us but he kind of insists that we do it together. It's weird."

"He still has guards posted elsewhere? Even during meals?" Michonne confirmed still digging for any information she could get about their situation.

"One or two all around, like upstairs near the entrance, in the security office, stationed in the lab, even since Maitland left."

Michonne considered that. Clearly, Ngangabouka was still partial to holding court. He wanted to survey his kingdom and mealtime was the best time to do it. When everyone from the three disparate groups gathered to feed. It was like surveying the animals when they were at their most vulnerable, i.e. at the watering hole.

"Wait a minute, 'before Maitland left'? Where'd she go?" Michonne's brain just caught up with her ears. Since Rick had informed her of the doctor's existence, she was well aware that the poor woman couldn't up and leave herself.

She caught Sasha giving Glenn a withering look. The private stammered yet again trying to self-correct. He was such a poor liar Michonne almost felt sorry for him.

"Glenn, Sasha, where did she go?" Michonne repeated slowly, looking between the two of them since they both seemed to be in the know. She tried to keep her aggravation under control but it was utterly ridiculous that they would know yet another thing about what was going on that she didn't.

"The Captain took Dr. Maitland with him," Glenn admitted reluctantly.

"What? Why?"

Glenn explained to the best of his ability. Michonne referred back to a UN-organized epidemiology crash course she'd taken during the Dengue Fever outbreak of 2009 to try and understand...more or less. And she would have been more pissed if she wasn't suddenly so worried.

"They're keeping her heavily sedated for transport. And the area is supposed to be kinda unaffected, so getting her to the facility shouldn't be that bad," He added as consolation.

'Unaffected or no, no place was 'uninfected'. And that was all that mattered.

Glenn's voice receded into background as Michonne considered his previous words. He wasn't saying anything she technically didn't already know. Mamet had already posited that it was something about the high altitudes in conjunction with the weather that was proving to be less than conducive to the pathogen's otherwise unchecked spread. According to Dr. Lerner, by way of Milton, the mountainous communities and countries that had reported in via the internet and shortwave radio, had been reporting much lighter than expected casualty and infection rates. So, Tobin hadn't been that far off when he had imagined a relocation to the Rocky Mountains. Michonne sighed heavily, thinking of it and him. It had been literally two nights since then and yet she felt like a million things had occurred in the interim.

Rick and his group could be, in fact, should be safe. She tried to console herself. Whether or not they actually were was a totally different story.

The dining room was already astir with people by the time they arrived. To Michonne's surprise it was a sizable group. As usual, Ngangabouka had moved from his compound with a coterie of young men and one or two women. If she had to guess, not including those still on duty, there were fifteen to twenty of his people milling about. Then there were the fifteen surviving staff of this outpost. An interesting mystery was building for Michonne concerning them.

Denise had told one particular story about the demise of the rest, while Rick had let her in on a totally different version courtesy of Ngangabouka. And for some reason she could not yet identify, something told her contrary to common sense regarding trusting the word of a psychopath, the truth lay somewhere between the two accounts. Nevertheless, once she included what remained of her small group, the number of souls trapped in the facility ballooned to somewhere into the neighborhood of forty. A sizable group. Most of whom were in this room right now. It was strangely worrisome.

The food smelled surprisingly good and for the first time in 24 hours, Michonne actually wanted to eat. Provided she kept it light, Denise had promised her she could. But Michonne covetously eyed pieces of skirt steak that floated past her on various dinner plates. Despite Denise's warning, her loudly growling stomach signified just another part of her that was anxious to get back to normal as quickly as possible.

"Miss Michonne?" She looked up and to her surprise, Ngangabouka's man Simon was standing off to her left on the other side of Private Rhee.

Glenn stepped forward then and placed himself between Sasha, Michonne and the man addressing them. He didn't say anything but Michonne detected the instant change in his demeanor, from the almost unassumingly friendly young man she'd spent the afternoon chatting with, to the vigilant sentry Rick was relying on to keep them safe. The turn was silent and slight, but startlingly noticeable. Even Sasha seemed to look at him with new eyes suddenly.

"Yes," Michonne answered quickly. She wasn't sure exactly how much had changed since the last time she'd seen Ngangabouka but she was certain his men still made their bones challenging unproven others. She was not about to allow Glenn to become an unwitting notch in this far larger man's belt.

She placed a hand on Glenn's shoulder and squeezed to relay her message: _Stand Down_.

Simon watched the movement and smiled slightly before speaking again. *DaDa requests you and your friends come sit with him and Mama.*

He spoke French clearly and concisely but for a moment Michonne was not sure she heard him correctly.

"Oné is here?" She looked around quickly, surprised at how excited the notion made her.

Simon looked confused for a moment. *Oné? Mama Oné has been dead for years. Mama Ariane.* He clarified.

Michonne was stunned. _Oné had died?_ She had been the picture of health and an almost immortal fortitude the last time she'd seen her. Despite her role in Michonne's captivity, for some reason, the older woman was one of the only people she thought back on warmly. She was genuinely saddened by this news.

Michonne shook the thought free. What was that, some bizarre form of Stockholm Syndrome? She wondered before once again her brain caught up with her ears. _Mama_ _Ariane_? Why was he referring to her in that way? The idea of it was absurd, for a number of reasons, none more so than the fact that Simon was easily ten years her elder. That he would be calling Ariane 'mama' seemed utterly ridiculous. She almost laughed until she saw he was perfectly serious.

"They insist," Simon added to clear up Michonne's perceived confusion.

Michonne looked at Glenn and Sasha, who watched her in turn, awaiting her response. Whether to sit with them or not was certainly not a hill she was prepared to die on. Plus now, curiosity had taken hold. She shrugged and followed Simon to the table with Glenn and Sasha trailing behind. The ten-top table was already nearly at capacity when they approached. Ngangabouka stood as she arrived and waited until Simon had seated her to sit again. Ariane sat to one side of him, as Simon took the seat on the other side, not unlike Dwight and Mama Oné had once done. The fleeting idea that they were both two in a long line of advisors that were highly interchangeable and ultimately replaceable sent a chill down Michonne's spine. She looked around the table at her dining companions already seated. Ariane was followed by Dr. Lerner and Dr. Porter, while Denise and Rosita sat on the other side of Simon. Ngangabouka sat directly opposite her at the table and once again he seemed genuinely delighted to see her.

"Oh boy, you do look better!" He smiled widely, snapping his napkin open and letting it drop into his lap. Michonne felt a wave of deja vu at the motion. "I mean, even jacked up or rode hard and put away wet you find a way to look majestic Michonne, but I have to say, you looked pretty rough yesterday. Kudos again, Doc."

He beamed at Denise oblivious to the scandalized looks of nearly every woman sat at the table. Dr. Lerner cleared her throat conspicuously.

He looked around as if just realizing he'd said something offensive and was unclear as to what exactly it was. He searched all the averted gazes before locking eyes with Michonne, who had never looked away or changed her indifferent expression in the first place. His lips curled slowly into serpentine smile as it seemed to dawn on him what he'd said.

"Excuse me, Ladies, but I don't believe I'd indicated ridden by whom." He smiled wickedly, delighted by his own words, as Ariane scowled. "Speaking of which, no word yet from the Captain."

The news hurt and the words made her cheeks burn with embarrassment but Michonne remained visibly unmoved, only nodding slightly in acknowledgment of what he'd said.

He looked up then and snapped his fingers. Someone appeared immediately, a young man with a sweaty bandana around his head and an apron folded in half and tied at his waist. Ngangabouka looked at the empty space in front of Michonne at the table.

"Get the ladies a plate."

Denise raised her hand demurely as if she were in a classroom and seeking to be acknowledged.

"Dr. Denise?" Ngangbouka responded exactly as if she were.

"Ms. Philippe really needs broth, if there's anything like that. Clear, if possible."

Michonne glared at the doctor as if she were a traitor. Her stomach rumbled angrily in agreement. The young man, who Michonne presumed was the chef, wiped his brow and spoke in a flurry of slightly peeved Swahili. Ngangabouka's expression darkened but before he could say anything, Ariane sprang to her feet closest to the cook and slapped him fiercely. The blow was so forceful and unexpected the young man's head swung wildly on the axis of his neck and he staggered. He grabbed the back of Dr. Porter's chair to brace himself. Michonne noticed the doctor, besides the initial flinch at the sound, hardly moved at all in response with his head down, as if that would prevent him from being seen.

The young cook pulled the bandana off his head and rang it tightly between his two hands as he apologized profusely. He turned to Michonne and bowed slightly apologizing to her as well before retreating hastily.

Michonne was well versed by many experiences, none the least being her previous time spent in Ngangabouka's company, not to allow displays such as this one, unsettle her. But it appeared she was virtually alone in that. Sasha and Dr. Lerner both looked ready to bolt at the slightest additional provocation. Rosita worried her jaw in barely concealed contempt. Glenn looked around the table on the qui vive as Denise appeared close to tears she fought valiantly to keep at bay.

"Your soup will be out shortly," Ariane regained her seat calmly as Ngangabouka looked on, proudly.

They sat in a conspicuous silence for a few moments. Soon, those who already had their food began eating and others were served. Michonne watched as Glenn, with great care, cut the food on Sasha's plate into small, manageable pieces. He had not yet touched anything on his own plate as he worked his fork and knife methodically across hers. The young woman averted her gaze as if she couldn't bear to see him do this for her. And as a seemingly very self-possessed person, Michonne imagined it was an indignity for Sasha.

Michonne looked up then and saw Ngangabouka watching her or rather watching her watch Glenn and Sasha. She felt ashamed of the obvious pity that had been written on her face in that moment. It was a useless emotion she thought she'd rid herself of long ago as a professional necessity. Yet it had been there. Ngangabouka's expression, however, was far more inscrutable as he looked at her and their eyes locked. Her bowl of clear broth came just then and she was grateful for the distraction.

They all ate in an excruciating silence that surprised Michonne. Though they'd only actually broken bread together a few times, Michonne's experience of Ngangabouka was of someone who eagerly filled any and all silences with the sound of his own voice. Yet here he was, as quiet as a church mouse. She looked up from her studious observation of her soup bowl to find he was still watching her. It was growing unnerving.

"So, Miss Michonne, how is your son?" Ariane said suddenly breaking the silence and startling Michonne.

"My son?" Everyone turned to Michonne with interest. Nganagbouka was the only one who looked at Ariane instead of her.

"Yes. Were you not pregnant the last time we saw you? He should be, what, four now?" Ariane wiped her mouth daintily with her napkin, dabbing the corners. "I apologize, in my mind I always imagined a boy, perhaps the spitting image of the Captain? Am I wrong, was it a girl instead?"

Michonne nearly choked on her broth, in direct opposition to Denise's intent in giving it to her in the first place. She was caught completely off-balance. She had no idea what Ariane hoped to accomplish by dredging up this ancient deception. A deception, which now had the sudden added benefit of publicly calling the nature of her ongoing working relationship with Rick into question. Yes, she'd admitted to Sasha that they were together. That still wasn't something she was ready to be general knowledge. It was bad enough that Ngangabouka also knew.

Michonne coughed violently trying to keep the fluid from going any further down her windpipe. Sasha rapped her hard on the back with her good hand and unfortunately the pain of the blow radiated through her. Before she could do it again, Michonne raised a hand quickly in surrender to stay Sasha's. Still, Ariane expression was perfectly serene and expectant. Michonne even thought maybe she spied traces of mirth in her eyes.

Ariane's motive was anyone's guess but she'd put her on the spot, Michonne assumed, with the thought that perhaps she'd continue the lie or else be undone by it. Michonne inhaled as she caught her breath, planning to do neither. Ngangbouka could think what he wanted - it had happened four years ago.

"You know full well I was never pregnant." Michonne pulled herself up to her full height, despite the pain in her side, straightening her back in the chair. "I think even Mr. Nganagbouka will have to acknowledge that put in the position that I was, I needed to use every tool at my disposal to insure my own safety."

A smile dawned over Nganagbouka's face eclipsing the rare look of utter confusion he'd worn a moment before. "I would."

He said it simply and then it was Ariane's turn to look nonplussed. He looked at Michonne and smiled the smile of one confronted by a worthy adversary or a fellow scoundrel. Against her better judgment, Michonne returned his expression in kind.

The cook and a helper came just then each depositing a bucket-sized plastic container of ice cream on the table between them with an inelegant thud. "Chocolate, Vanilla," he said plainly in English.

"Dessert!" Ngangabouka announced to the table cheerily as Ariane threw her napkin up on the table and excused herself.

*  
So many things had happened in the last few days that Michonne would have never imagined possible. Things that defied description: Plague had overrun the earth, the major governments across the globe had collapsed into chaos, she, a no one, had been literally tasked with helping to save the world, Rick had told her finally that he loved her and now, Peter Ngangabouka, infamous domestic terrorist and vicious warlord was walking her and Sasha to their respective front doors like a 16-year old prom date.

Granted, Glenn walked five paces behind them accompanied by Simon and another of Ngangabouka's men but that only served to make the experience more surreal instead of less.

The arm that rested on his as he led them companionably down the long corridor itched and crawled as if she'd rubbed the length of it with poison ivy. Michonne pushed the general revulsion she felt in his presence down in order to accomplish her task. He was no fool so she didn't lay it on too thickly. She remained quiet and quietly resistant even as she allowed him the victory of helping them back to their room. Sasha, being as quick a study as Michonne had suspected, walked on his other side silently but receptive to his chatter as well.

"Goodnight sir," she said respectfully when they got to the doors. "Thank you for the delicious dinner."

He nodded at her, clearly pleased to be thanked as if he'd prepared the food himself. Sasha went into her room but then quickly reopened the door to beckon Glenn to join her. He hesitated looking from Michonne to Sasha before complying. As the door closed behind him, Michonne had no doubt that both he and Sasha remained just on the opposite side poised should she need them. She'd banished Rosita earlier but Michonne was also fairly certain the sergeant was, in all likelihood, sitting inside her room waiting for her in the chair beside the bed.

As if she truly had been walked to her front door by a beau, Nganagbouka stood awkwardly in front of her waiting to say their goodnights. It was a completely ridiculous idea but if Michonne didn't know better she'd have thought the man was smitten. Whatever his game was however, Michonne would remain wary and ready to fight if need be. Still, she remembered her grandmother's advice, _you catch more flies with honey than vinegar_ and Ngangabouka was one big, hairy, obnoxious horsefly.

"I was very sorry to hear about Oné," she offered quietly.

He looked at her with a reprise of the look he'd given her earlier in the evening. "Why?"

Michonne was flabbergasted by the question.

"Because she was your mother-in-law and she was kind to me." They were both true things, even though they weren't entirely accurate. Michonne had strangely admired Oné, respected how she'd managed to carve out an existence in his brutal shadow without being brutal herself. But above all else she'd just liked her.

He rocked back on his heels and regarded her as if uncertain how to respond.

"If you don't mind me asking, how did she die?" She'd seemed so strong. It was hard to imagine what might have been her undoing.

His expression darkened, so much so that the hairs on the back of Michonne's neck rose to attention and she prayed she was right about Glenn, Sasha and Rosita being just on the other side of their respective doors.

He looked at her carefully angling his head like a bird of prey. "I _killed_ her."

He spoke simply, moving barely at all and yet Michonne felt as if he'd grabbed her and shook her one good time. She nearly reeled back from him.

"Because of you. I require and demand loyalty above all things. I can't have traitors in my midst."

Against all judgment and good sense, Michonne's throat closed and her eyes grew glassy as they filled with unshed tears.

"As you said, I can't blame you for using whatever you had at your disposal. But I can't tolerate people betraying my trust. I trusted her like no other. Took her into my confidence. That she would lie to me and side with you, _a nobody_ , was unforgivable," he said it with the easy finality of a decision already made long ago— which of course it was.

"She had to go. But don't worry I harbor no ill will towards you over it. In fact, I'm glad you helped me ferret out a betrayer. I'm glad I was able to nip that in the bud too before she infected my little bird, Ariane.."

Michonne pulled herself together quickly hoping that he hadn't noticed that for a moment she'd lost herself. Ariane? _The whole stupid fucking thing had been_ her _idea_. A lie that to hear Ngangabouka tell it now, she had not even needed. According to Rick, it had never been Ngangabouka's intention to hurt her, but rather to use her as leverage. Not that she was sure she believed Ngangabouka, but looking back at his behavior at the time, it had definitely supported that assertion. So what had been the purpose of that rather elaborate farce? Michonne recalled suddenly that she'd wondered that even back then. She also remembered that it had been Ariane that soothingly reassured her that the whole charade was necessary.

A farce she'd recruited Oné into and that had ultimately gotten her killed.

Michonne looked at Ngangabouka then and wondered if she should reveal to him that both she and he had been played expertly by a seventeen-year-old.

"...I keep my inner circle small because I have to know I can trust them. No mistakes."

Michonne nodded understandingly, resolved then to keep her revelation to herself.

"Well, I'm literally on my last legs, good night," Michonne said abruptly and turned for her room.

She moved her cane awkwardly to emphasize the aching weakness in her side as she pushed into her room allowing the door to close directly behind her, in his face. As she moved farther into the room, she thought uncharitably, if anyone was ever deserving of having a deadly viper in his nest, it was the man who'd been standing before her.


	51. Chapter 51

May 9th 2011  
Location Unknown, DRC

François hissed in Michonne's ear as he dragged her off to the side. Somehow all attention had turned from her to Shane and Oné arguing as she pulled herself out of François' grip uneasily. This whole thing had been a symphony of indignities where she was pushed around, roughed up and injured at regular intervals. As Shane shouted near incoherently at Oné and Dwight, Michonne looked around at the people watching silently. She supposed at some point, if she lived long enough, she'd be like them. This would become second nature to her and she would be cowed. In that moment, Michonne vowed to have escaped or died in the attempt before she allowed that to happen to her.

François grabbed her arm again roughly and pulled her away, toward the door as Shane continued to rage. No one but Ariane seemed to notice, but even she seemed too caught up in the disagreement to give more than a glancing acknowledgement to Michonne's exit.

She resisted for a moment until François growled at her under his breath, "He wants us to kill you now, would you like to stand here until she changes her mind?"

Michonne looked at him in surprise; he almost sounded like he cared. But as he saw the look on her face he sucked his teeth, pulling her harder through the exit doors.

"You don't know him, he's not gonna stop until he finds her!" Shane complained as the doors were closing, separating Michonne from the part of the conversation she was most interested in.

 _She had been right, Rick was searching for her._ She realized triumphantly.

Michonne marched across the courtyard to the Big House, pushed roughly by François. Other than a handful of guards at the main gate, the square was near desolate. They weren't kidding about everybody being in attendance for meals. Which gave Michonne the idea that during meals might be the best time to escape. So perhaps it was for the best that Shane had effectively ruined the one small bit of freedom she'd been granted. In that moment, she tried to resign herself to the remand to her room but for some strange reason, the idea of that suddenly irritated her more than the rest of her situation.

*May I at least have a book or something?* Michonne asked in French as she walked down the long hallway to her room.

*Shut up!* François snapped. *You have caused nothing but problems since we laid eyes on you.*

Michonne wondered who's fault that was until she thought about François' words. *'Since you laid eyes on me?' Were you following me before?*

François' lips flattened as if he refused to say more. He stood stiffly at the door as she walked into the center of the small room and turned on him.

*Ngangabouka had people following me before you kidnapped me?*

He didn't speak but the non-response was confirmation enough.

*For how long?* She demanded harshly.

He shrugged, averting his gaze and Michonne saw, for perhaps first time, how young François was. In that moment, rather than challenge him further, Michonne took another tack.

*It's frightening to think someone was watching as I went about my everyday business,* She admitted sighing heavily as he watched her suspiciously. He was clearly expecting an explosion of indignation and was clearly uncertain how to handle her resignation. *What if I was doing something embarrassing and you lot saw it?*

*Did I? Were you one of the people following me?* She asked, keeping any resentment out of her voice.

He shook his head still obviously suspicious of her motivations.

*Could have seen me checking myself out in the store windows, I do that. Make sure my make-up's on right, check that my slip isn't showing. That would be embarrassing. I'm a little vain. I admit it,* Michonne didn't know the last time she'd worn a slip but the little lie had the desired effect.

François was silent for a moment, deciding something. Michonne could see the indecision on his face, warring with his animosity.

*My sister was like that. Never met a mirror she didn't like, we used to say.* He said it with a mixture of melancholy and affection that revealed he hadn't seen her in a long time.

Michonne smiled mildly and raised her hand meekly as if embarrassed by the admission. *Me too. Being without a mirror here has been hard.*

*Dwight didn't want you to have one. Too risky he said. You could try hurting yourself or one of us.*

Michonne was the one to shrug this time then glanced at the window. *That's just silly. I could do the same thing with the glass in those slats.*

The realization seemed to startle him until he also realized she hadn't. He shook his head amused.* Dwight is an idiot.*

*I won't argue with that.*

*Oh, so that makes one thing.* He almost muttered to himself.

Michonne laughed. *Do I have a reputation?*

François looked at her then, bemused. *Do you? You are the only person besides Mama Oné that we've ever seen argue with DaDa and live.*

Michonne's smile faltered. _That was a frightening thought._

*You fight with everyone, about everything! When you will get up, what you will eat, what you will wear! You fight with DaDa, you fight with Mama, you even fight with Marion and she's mute!* François laughed.

Michonne was shocked at how musical his laugh sounded and how handsome it made his face. She'd never seen this side of him. When he smiled, it brightened his whole face and he didn't look much past twenty-one. She chuckled too, walking to her bed and perching on the corner. She had no idea the people of the camp were watching. She must have seemed like a proper hellion.

*Well, I'm here against my will, François. You don't actually expect me to be cooperative?* She admitted truthfully, the idea mildly amusing her.

For a fraction of a second, he seemed impressed for a moment before he answered. He shifted the rifle hanging on his shoulder as if it were uncomfortable and glanced down the hall behind him. *No, we expect you to be scared.*

He was being honest too.

She was quiet for a moment. _Of_ course _she was scared._ It was remarkable to her that he didn't see that. She'd been trying to hold it together and not really sure how she was doing. The longer she was here the more distraught she became. It was surprising to hear that that constant fear wasn't bleeding through what she thought of as a pretty transparent façade of bravado.

*I am,* She said quietly looking down at her hands.

*Then, not enough, not of the right people.* François corrected, turning again to look down the hall as if he expected someone. The harshness returned to his voice. *You think she's helping you but she's the one digging your grave with that Walsh. Don't trust her. She is not your friend.*

*Who?* Michonne couldn't believe François of all people would be the one warning her. _Could she even believe what he was telling her?_ A part of her screamed no, but the larger part said yes. He gained nothing by lying to her.

His voice lowered to the point that it barely bridged the distance between them. The urgency, however, was crystal clear. *You have no friends here. Remember that.*

*You announce yourself when you approach. Not every conversation is for your ears. I know Mama Oné has already told you that.* It was a sudden and stern reprimand.

Michonne didn't know who he was talking to until she saw Fabian standing next to François in the doorway.

*I'm sorry.* Fabian said to him sheepishly, his head bowed.

*Don't apologize. Don't do it!* François barked, tipping Fabian's head up with a quick, sharp finger under his chin. And with that, the brief window into the man François was behind the hard mask closed. He turned back to Michonne briefly.

*Can you read French as well as speak it?*

She nodded.

*I'll see about some reading materials.* He began to close the door before pausing, *And don't forget what I told you.*

Michonne nodded as he pulled the door shut harshly.

The noise of the slamming door made Michonne jump. He couldn't have been more ominous if he'd tried. Still, it was nothing she hadn't thought to herself anyway. She had no idea why Mama Oné had decided to help her to begin with, so it wasn't any real revelation that the woman didn't have her best interests at heart. Her relationship with Ngangabouka was very complex and though she might appear to be helping Michonne, her loyalty to him ran deep.

Michonne was lost in thought until she heard the soft knocking on the door minutes later.

"Yes?"

"It's Fabian, Miss Michonne."

"Yes, I know." Michonne pulled her legs up on the bed, crossing them under her.

"I'm your friend." Fabian whispered, barely audible through the door.

Michonne smiled to herself despite the heavy words that had just been left for her to mull over.

"Yes, I know."

* * *

As his last duty of his shift, Fabian walked Michonne back to Ngangabouka's suite the next morning. She was surprised...and worried. Marion had gone with Ngangabouka so there was no special outfit she was forced to don and the walk to that side of the building was almost leisurely. Still, she had no idea what this could be about and knew better than to ask Fabian. It made the walk an uneasy one, where she tried to memorize more of the typography to calm herself. The memory of what became of someone who had entered that room a guest and then never left ate at her. But when he knocked, Onè opened the door herself admitting Michonne with something close to a smile before dismissing Fabian.

Michonne was genuinely sorry to see the boy go. They'd stayed up almost the entire night talking and practicing card tricks. He was a quick study. In another couple of nights she would exhaust her meager knowledge and he might need to start teaching her. His knowledge of other things surprised her too. He liked astronomy and was a serious movie buff. He could recite the placement of constellations and nebulas and then the release dates and production information for a wealth of films, from recent movies back to the beginning of cinema. He was like a walking encyclopedia. Combined with his childlike innocence, Michonne had begun to suspect he was some sort of savant. The idea that a gentle soul and inherent intellect like his would be wasted by Ngangabouka annoyed her beyond measure.

*He's a good boy,* Michonne said in French after he left and Oné led her to the circular dining table. The room was empty other than them and so Michonne felt freer to speak her mind. She took a seat across from Oné and waited until she had the woman's attention to continue. *He doesn't belong here.*

*He's a man,* Oné corrected her.

"No, no he is not."

Oné gestured to her to help herself to the food that was on the table before responding. "He's turned eighteen. They both have."

"I know you know what I mean. And having him do this, guarding me is a waste of his talents. He belongs in a school."

Oné smiled. "You've been speaking to him." She shook her head as if amused.

Suddenly, François' words came back to Michonne.

Maybe she shouldn't have admitted to that.

"Do you suppose he would be able to survive here if he did not have a job to do like everyone else?"

"You could send him back to his family." Michonne argued.

Oné laughed bitterly, "What family? Or did you forget, his father is dead, his sister is here and you helped get his mother killed?"

Michonne felt as if Onè slapped her. "I had nothing to do with that!"

She defended herself uneasily since she felt a small undercurrent of truth to the statement. A small part of her accepted that culpability.

"You harbored my son's wife, did you not? Helped her deceive him, eh? He does not take kindly to that. You lie to him at your peril."

François' words came back to her like shouting in her brain. It screamed at her to put an end to this conversation before something bad happened, but she couldn't stop. Not yet. "Then why exactly are you helping me, huh?"

Oné laughed and looked at her closely. It was a searching look as if she hoped to see into Michonne's innermost thoughts, into her soul. "I told you, I don't have to do everything I'm told by him. Ariane said you needed help and I decided to give it. That is all."

"No," Michonne said defiantly dropping her fork and staring back at Onè. "You are the person most loyal to him in this camp. I suspect you are the only person who truly cares for him...despite whatever he's probably done to you."

Her expression grew sad as Michonne watched, darkening from the brightness of a moment before. Michonne could see the tears making her eyes glassy. It was unsettling, this diamond-hard woman suddenly on the verge of tears. Michonne was unexpectedly moved. She was tempted to retract her statement, if this was its result.

Oné reached out and covered Michonne's hand with her own on the table. Michonne was so surprised she flinched, pulling her hand away quickly. It was too much like Ngangabouka's man from the day before. Visions of the aftermath of that breakfast flashed before her eyes again. She shivered and shook her head revolted by the memory, trying to shake it free.

Onè misunderstood and was visibly hurt. The first tear slipped over her cheek and down before she could wipe it away roughly and gather herself.

"I'm sorry." Michonne said and meant it genuinely. But she could not say anything more; there was only so much sympathy she could consciously muster for one of her captors.

Onè shook her head waving it off. She offered Michonne a small closed-mouth smile even as a few more tears slid silently down her face. "You are so like her."

She spoke so low it was nearly a whisper. As if she was actually just speaking to herself and Michonne was eavesdropping. "I saw it almost immediately but I didn't realize he saw it too. Not until yesterday."

"What?"

As if Michonne's voice had broken a spell, Onè looked at her then —at her, not into the past through her— and wiped the tears away.

"Fabian is entrusted with things we feel he is capable of. He earns his place like everyone else."

"By guarding prisoners?" Michonne interjected, realizing the moment, whatever it was, was gone. "He could be hurt."

"Would you hurt him?" Onè asked.

"Of course not." Michonne said as if the idea was absurd.

"So then."

"You can't expect everyone to be like me."

"Everyone who? You are the first. Do you really think my son-in-law is in the habit of keeping captives? Feeding them? Clothing them? Tell me, you have been here a few days, have you seen any other prisoners?"

Onè's question silenced Michonne for a moment because of its very obvious answer. The truth of it cut right through her, a chill rolling down her spine. The whole thing continually frustrated her beyond measure and everyone refused to answer her.

"WHY AM I HERE!" Michonne slammed her flat palm down on the table in abject frustration rattling the fine china and silverware. Onè just eyed her coolly.

"Because of Mr. Walsh's presence in camp, I find I have to restrict you to your room again. But I thought you'd at least prefer to eat your breakfast at a table with a person like a human, was I mistaken?" She arched her eyebrow dressing Michonne down wordlessly.

Michonne composed herself even as anger burned in her chest.

"No."

Onè returned to her meal and then eventually Michonne did too. There was little else to do. Michonne considered for a moment asking after Ariane but thought better of it. If the young woman was occupied elsewhere, it was probably for the best. Despite how much she leaned on Onè, Michonne had the distinct impression Ariane resented her. Michonne could hardly blame her. The older woman's main job in camp seemed to be normalizing what were clearly highly abnormal circumstances.

"Oh, François left this for you." Onè said changing the subject yet again effortlessly, as if nothing had happened at all. She reached onto the chair beside her and produced a small, heavy hardcover book and pushed it toward Michonne.

She took it up and turned the old book over in her hands admiring the well worn and illegible spine. Then she looked at the title on the front cover and nearly cried. François was at once far smarter than she gave him credit for being, and had a far more wicked sense of humor than Michonne could have suspected.

" _Le Puits et le Pendule_. I've never read it, I don't particularly care for Poe. Do you know what it is about?"

Michonne gave a wry smile looking at the title on the cover again: _The Pit and the Pendulum and Other Gruesome Tales of Terror_. "It's about a man during the Spanish Inquisition imprisoned and tortured for reasons unknown to him. It's about the impermanence of time and the inescapable inevitability of death."

Onè smirked. "I can speak to François, if you'd like. Get you some better reading material?"

Michonne shook her head flipping to the book's table of contents. "No, there are other stories in here I do like that aren't quite so... on the nose."

"I suppose." The woman said with a shrug.

Michonne put the book down gently beside her plate and picked up her fork to finally eat. Onè watched her silently for a moment before doing the same.


	52. Chapter 52

7/28/15 13:42 GMT  
Aberdeen International Airport, Dyce, Scotland

"Can we slow down? Just for a minute?" Milton asked from a full yard behind them.

They were less than a mile from the airport and the doctor was already huffing and puffing. It surprised Rick that the slender man wasn't in better shape. But then 350 lbs. linebackers who looked like they were going to die from hypertension any moment ran up and down a 120-yard football field numerous times per game and barely got winded. Still, if he'd had to guess, he would have said he and Carol had around five to ten years on Mamet and Daryl had about 50 lbs. on him and yet without them pacing themselves they'd have left the young doctor in the dust. But, in his defense, between the broken arm and the large face wound, he was also quite hurt. Given that, Rick supposed age, size and shape had nothing to do with it and strove for greater patience with him.

Rick tried not to roll his eyes but looking over at Daryl, it became clear he didn't have to. Dixon had done it for all of them. Daryl was already seething with anger over Jesus and the complaining was not further endearing the doctor to him. Carol remained conspicuously quiet and Rick just lowered his eyes and shook his head. _They were quite a quartet._

Mamet shifted the pack on his back again and cradled the arm he held in a sling. It wasn't that the bag was actually heavy. It contained some bandages for dressing his own wound, lab specimens and the external hard drive they'd been entrusted with but little else. Because of his injuries and the three soldiers general distrust of his capabilities, he would not have been allowed to carry anything at all, if he hadn't insisted vehemently on it. But now as he lagged behind, clutching his broken arm to his chest and out of breath like he was hauling bricks on his back, Rick considered lightening his load even more.

"How much farther?" Milton asked a few short minutes later. "I don't mean to belabor the point but I really don't understand why we couldn't have driven." He trudged right at their heels once they'd slowed a bit more to accommodate him.

Rick could almost see Daryl's eyes rolling again in his peripheral vision. Carol smiled tolerantly at the doctor but for some reason, Rick suspected it was less than genuine. He adjusted his own pack and considered how to answer the question tactfully. He supposed this was a grown man's equivalent of "Are we there yet?" and it was annoying in the same manner nevertheless. But in that moment, Daryl surprised them all by being the one to answer, and with more than just a hostile grunt.

"All those miles of deserted road you see on TV are crap, Doc. In a real emergency, every shitbird with four wheels jumps in their old Chevy and hits the road thinkin' they're the first genius to get that idea. In real life, we'd be lucky to find one, single quarter-mile without a stalled-out beater blocking the way, not to mention, dozens of those things wanderin' around. If you want empty stretches of roadway, it's the train tracks every time."

Both Milton and Rick listened fascinated by Daryl's insight. For Rick, it wasn't at all about what he'd said, which Rick recognized as truth, but the mere fact that he'd said so much of it. It was probably more words strung together than all the other times Daryl had spoken to Rick since they'd met...combined. He appreciated the effort enough that he chose not to add anything to Milton and Daryl's conversation himself. Carol just watched as if Daryl spoke like this all the time and after a moment, they all fell back into a contemplative silence, keeping their eyes trained on the suddenly heavily wooded area they'd entered.

Rick's rifle lay loosely cradled in his arms but he kept his hand on its grip, index finger resting on the trigger-guard, ready. For long minutes they walked quietly, only the occasional birdsong or flapping of wings breaking the silence. The world had ended only days earlier and yet there was already an appreciable difference in the environment. The quiet seemed deeper to Rick, the smells richer and the browns and greens of the plants and trees that surrounded them more vivid. It was as if nature had already begun to reassert its claim on civilization. In a different world, the one he'd inhabited even just a week ago, Rick would have treasured the opportunity to take Carl on a walk through such a landscape. But now all the experience inspired in him was a vague sense of dread and a hyper-awareness of his surroundings.

* * *

After a while, in the distance, they came across a clearing in the thicket of trees that had seemingly encroached from all sides. The tracks they were on looked as if it narrowed to a truss bridge across a wide empty expanse. As they approached, the tops of uniformly quaint thatched-roofs came into view. Then closing in on the bridge, the white lime walls the roofs were attached to became further visible, dawning over the horizon line as the ground sloped downward before them. As they neared, Rick realized the trestlework bridge represented the only traverse across. And what he had originally thought were homes were actually, upon closer inspection, storefronts on a shopping thoroughfare beneath them. It became clear as they came nearer to the edge that the road below was more of a British-style high street than the residential neighborhood he mistook it for initially. And then as if making Daryl's earlier point for him, the full picture emerged.

 _This was going to be a problem_.

Daryl, who was at that moment taking the lead, turned suddenly, raised a hand from his side and made a fist. The wordless sign to halt. He turned and stooped down to inch quietly back to where they were coming up behind him. Rick and Carol immediately followed suit but Milton did not. Carol, who had chosen to walk abreast of him, was forced to reach up and grab Mamet by the loop of his pack and drag him back to his knees as quietly as she could manage. She pulled the scientist into a crouch where they could all confer near wordlessly. Daryl scowled at him then and he looked appropriately shame-faced.

"Get your head outta the clouds, Doc." Daryl growled under his breath. "We ain't on a fuckin' field trip."

The entire high street was thick with stalled cars, buses and infected. People, who had perhaps been shoppers a day or two earlier, roamed blindly around the streets. A quick count made at least fifty of them to Rick's eyes. They were all down in the valley between the hills that adjoined the trestle on either side, so there could have been even more Rick just couldn't see. He sighed to himself in irritation.

A survey of the terrain before them failed to reveal another way across and the slope of the hills around them was steep but gentle enough that a motivated climber could get up. No one had seen these creatures climb but they hadn't not seen it either. One way or another they knew, if they were spotted, the infected would be more than "motivated" to reach them. All that meant was that they had to get across the trestle bridge in as quiet a manner as humanly possible. Unfortunately, the trestle had been made to accommodate a train on its track, not bipedal humans trying to evade a zombie horde. There was not much in the way of a walkway and the rail-ties were spaced disconcertingly far apart, with a nice view of the thirty-foot drop to the ground between each of them.

"I don't think we want to try and double back." Rick whispered examining the terrain on the newly-activated satellite nav-phone.

The phone, which he'd been given on the Ticonderoga, had been like a high-tech paperweight for nearly two days. Once they'd crossed over into the Southern Hemisphere despite assurances to the contrary, it had just suddenly stopped working. But about three hours ago, as they crossed over what the nav later indicated was Luxembourg, it had reactivated like a cell finally leaving a dead zone. Their "zombie-phone", as Jesus' had drolly called it, shocked their entire company by springing to life. That incited a flurry of calls that ultimately didn't end up providing anyone any new information. But since then, and for over an hour now, Rick had been fighting the impulse to use it to check in. His sole desire was to speak with his kids aboard the Andrew Jackson but he already knew they were fine.

Rick had used the intranet at the outpost in Rwanda to exchange a few brief emails with their superiors. He had already known regular check-ins were the key to assuring his children's spaces aboard the ship remained secure. He'd been informed before he left that those spaces were at a premium and reserved only for the families of people on active-duty. So without even asking, he'd known that nearly 40-hours of radio-silence had put those spaces in jeopardy.

Still, once in contact, he was quickly reassured that the children and Beth were safe in the same tersely-worded way he'd apprised them of his deviation from their established mission parameters. But deep down, he knew something had happened. And until he had actionable results or intelligence to report to the Secretary of State —which required him to get himself and his group to the WHO facility—it was clear they weren't planning to be any more forthcoming than they had already been. Of course, just knowing his children were still alive was not the same as speaking with them and hearing it for himself. And at that moment, holding that nav phone in his hands, it became increasingly difficult to think of anything else.

"...Looks like every other route takes us through even more populated places." Carol was saying, looking over his shoulder at the nav display.

"We can't risk that, but we're skirting the edge of a forest right now. Do we want to try cutting through it?" Rick asked trying to jump back into the conversation from where his mind had wandered briefly. "We still have a few hours of daylight left, technically."

He glanced up at the darkening, already overcast sky, "We might make up some time if we do."

"Anything could be in those trees." Carol reminded him. "I wanna see them coming."

Daryl set his mouth grimly but nodded in agreement. "Yeah."

Rick nodded in turn and even Milton concurred, delicately pawing at his wound again. It was inescapably true. If even a few infected wandered into the woods, with no sight-lines, it could make them relatively easy pickings.

 _The bridge it was._

"Okay, so Carol, you're first up. Then we'll use Jesus' rifle to pick off any Looky-Lous ...quietly."

She nodded, hoisting the large gun's strap higher up on her shoulder. What made her a good pilot: a steady hand, unflappable nerves and eagle eyes, had also made her a decently rated marksman in basic training, she'd informed them on the plane when volunteering to carry the heavy gun herself.

"Daryl, then you. We've only got the one suppressor and Lieu has it, so no firing unless we're FUBAR'd."

"Got it."

As they all got to their feet, Rick pulled Milton, who once again had missed the cue, up by his pack. He stumbled onto Rick with only one good arm to steady himself. "Dr. Mamet, you're with me, pulling up the rear. We are gonna cross tandem. You understand what that means?"

Milton rolled his eyes, gathering himself. "I am an English-speaker, so yes."

Rick didn't say anything immediately in response but gave the doctor one good shove in the direction they were all walking. He pitched forward but caught himself in a step or two. Rick waited again for Mamet to compose himself then continued.

"We take every step together, yes? _Every step_."

Milton nodded his understanding as they walked slowly toward the trestle.

Wordlessly, Rick made it clear to them all that he didn't want to hear even a twig break beneath someone's feet as they walked up. They approached the trestle carefully bent at the waist to avoid catching the eyes of any stargazers below. At the approach, they got down again and waited. This part was Carol's journey alone. Moving her pack around to the front where she could hug it to her chest with the other hand behind her, securing the gun, she walked slowly. Slightly hunched over, she made the first small jump from one rail tie to the next then paused. Her bag jostled but her arm across it stopped any major noise.

She repeated the same small hops across the expanse. What could have taken her three minutes under normal circumstances, took ten nail-biters. Rick looked between Peletier and Dixon, whose eyes took every single move with her. When she was safely on the other side, Rick actually saw Daryl exhale. She laid down in the high grass of the embankment then and took a position cater-corner from the track. From there, she could cover the opposite side just behind them and also a portion of the street below with the silenced sniper rifle. When she was set up with her eye behind the gun-sight, she waved them on with her arm and a thumbs up.

Daryl was up next. The preternatural silence all around seemed to accentuate the dull moaning sound of the infected beneath them. As the minutes passed, Rick could feel Milton growing increasingly apprehensive beside him. When he laid a hand on Milton's shoulder unexpectedly, it startled him.

"Doctor, relax. This is why we're gonna do it together."

Milton nodded but the fear emanated from him. Before long, he began to physically shake with trepidation.

As Daryl reached the midway point there was a sudden rustling in the treeline behind Carol. Rick and Mamet saw it immediately, Daryl may have as well, but it was obvious the Lieutenant had not. Rick got to his feet suddenly making a rallying gesture with his arm and pointing to it. Carol's head popped up from behind the rifle sight and she turned. Daryl turned first to Rick then back toward Carol once he realized what was happening. As they all watched, two infected, a man and woman, shambled out of the woods. They looked as if they'd been hikers. Dressed in bloodied t-shirts and ragged, dirty shorts with large full packs still strapped to their backs, they staggered forward.

Carol didn't move. There was a possibility that if she remained perfectly still they might not see her but Rick didn't want to take that chance and Daryl clearly didn't either. He moved faster trying to close the distance quietly as he made his way across. Carol rolled onto her back very slowly and pulled something off her hip.

 _A blade_.

"Move NOW," Rick instructed firmly in the doctor's ear, grabbing Mamet by the arm-strap of his backpack and pulling him toward the bridge.

Milton stumbled forward, ungainly as Rick strode to the edge, almost dragging him along.

One of the creatures, the woman, having noticed Dixon hustling across the bridge made for him, walking right past Carol, positioned quietly in the high grass. It walked toward him blindly and quickly missed the second rail-tie falling between them. But with the large hiking pack, it caught itself and hung lodged, arms outstretched between the two ties, effectively arresting Daryl's progress across.

"Careful now, _with me_ ," Rick said again trying to find the encouraging voice he used with Carl to teach him how to wait for the perfect pitch to swing at. "We're moving fast and most importantly _quietly_ but we can do it. C'mon."

Milton nodded again nervously taking the same step with Rick onto the first rail-tie. They were at the beginning, Dixon near the end and Peletier in trouble. Rick tried to control his frustration and anxiety with the situation.

Daryl pulled a large bowie knife from his waist, hopping to the rail-tie just before the ones the infected woman hung between. Meanwhile, Carol sat up as the infected man passed her. It was making its way toward the bridge and Daryl as well, attracted by the commotion created by the other. She popped up onto her feet and came up behind it stealthily. But before she could stab it with the knife, it turned on her.

Rick struggled to keep one eye on the traverse with Milton and another on his comrades. "Okay, we're doing good. C'mon now, Doc." He said quietly as they jumped to the next rail-tie. They were nearly midway across the expanse but Mamet kept glancing up. He was increasingly as preoccupied with the chaos blooming around him as Rick was.

The infected woman swiped wildly at Daryl as he attempted to approach it. The noise it was making growing in volume as it growled and the metal plates and utensils that hung from its pack smashed together violently.

"He's got to shut that thing up!" Milton declared frantically.

"He's trying, Dr. Mamet. Just focus on us. Focus on what we're trying to do right here. Keep looking at your feet," Rick said continuing to use his "Carl" voice.

Normally, looking down at the drop between the ties would have been the last thing Rick advised. But if they didn't, it would be easy to misjudge the jump and fall through. Keeping Mamet calm and focused on his feet was the only way they would make it across safely.

The infected hiker turned on Carol viciously, grabbing at her. He was at least twice her size, a formerly burly man with a beard. It reached for the hand the knife was in trying to lower his mouth to bite her. She punched it in the mouth, with her other hand, effectively knocking its face away. Then she kicked at its knee, knocking it to the ground but it pulled her down with it. The knife fell away a few feet from her, as she pitched forward on top of it. Rick, who had been watching as best he could, grabbed the doctor's arm to halt him then.

"Hang on," Rick ordered Mamet, stopping right in the middle of the track.

As Daryl struggled with the logistics of jumping from his tie to the next one where the woman remained lodged without being either bitten or knocked off, Rick pulled out the Beretta he'd confiscated from Milton. If he could get a clear shot, he decided in that moment, he was going to take it. _Noise be damned. Both Dixon and Peletier were in trouble._

"NO! They'll hear!" Mamet said terrified, bringing his arm down heavily across Rick's.

The gun went off, the shot wild and loud before flying out of Rick's hand and down through a space a few feet away. Rick could hear it faintly when it clattered and broke across the pavement feet below. The momentum pushed them both forward and Rick had only seconds to try and propel his body to the next tie. He fell across it, the wooden plank striking him hard in the lower ribs and hip, while Milton landed a little short. His chest and upper body bearing the brunt. Rick's body lay across three ties, while Milton hung across one with his feet dangling below him.

"Muthafucker!" Daryl exclaimed turning and jumping across the ties as fast as he could to retrace his steps back to them.

He got to Rick first, reaching to help him up by anchoring himself on a nearby steel girder.

Rick swatted his hand away. "Help Mamet! I'm alright, help Mamet." He held onto the tie across his chest and tried awkwardly to right himself, attempting to rise to his knees, where the other tie was located. Looking down, Rick saw a hundred eyes riveted, looking back up at him and the drama unfolding above them, like a waiting feeding frenzy.

"Oh God, oh god they see us!" Milton squealed seeing the ominous view at nearly the same moment as Rick.

Mamet struggled to right himself and pull his body back up onto the tracks. Daryl hopped toward the tie and gave the doctor his arm.

"Just shut _the fuck_ up and take my hand." Daryl barked.

Rick pushed himself gingerly to his knees. Between the weight of the pack on his back, his previously injured arm and shoulder and the expanse between ties, he realized he wouldn't be able to get further than that without Daryl's help for leverage. He remained quiet, however, looking over his shoulder to make sure Daryl pulled the doctor back up. He strained as gravity tried to drag him back down through the ties. Beads of sweat ran through his hair onto his forehead and then fell down into the unblinking eyes that watched the proceedings intently from below.

Suddenly, there was a flurry of small pops. The infected woman hanging lodged between rail ties slumped forward dead. Rick looked up then, across the tracks to see Carol, free from her assailant, again behind the large caliber gun and killing anything attempting to climb the hill behind them.

 _He should have known better. Should have known Peletier could handle herself._

Daryl finally came his way and gave him a hand. Between the two of them, with Daryl straddling two ties precariously, they pulled Rick back to his feet. Then he helped Daryl to right himself on a single tie as the doctor stood watching with his good arm wrapped tightly around one of the trestle's steel posts.

Rick looked to him, "Dr. Mamet, you okay?"

Milton nodded shakily, seemingly afraid to even speak now.

"I don't know why we even give a fuck," Daryl muttered under his breath. "This is the second goddamned time today."

"I know, Corporal, I know. But just give him a break, he's not military. I doubt he usually even gets out of his lab." Rick said low and turned his head to face the other direction briefly so that only Dixon could see his mouth move. " _We just need to get him there._ "

"...I swear if anyone else gets hurt 'cuz of him, I'll kill him myself."

Rick turned and slapped Daryl on the back once in consolation before inching over on the tie toward where the doctor stood immobilized. "I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that."

"C'mon, Doctor. It's gonna get thick up here soon." Rick said again, pulling Mamet gently away from the girder. Then he carefully led Milton across the expanse between the first two rail ties closest to him, followed by two more, one at a time until they established a rhythm.

The quiet pops from Carol's gun grew in number affirming Rick's words. He glanced up briefly from concentrating on their footing to note that Dixon had already made it back across the bridge. At that moment, he stood with his back to them, gun raised toward the shrubbery and treeline, watching intently for anything else that might decide to wander out. Daryl's expression was hard and etched with frustration. Rick knew if Daryl could have his way, they'd be depositing the doctor on the laboratory's doorstep before immediately heading back to Rwanda to collect their people. Rick sighed heavily as he continued to help Mamet slowly across. If he was perfectly honest with himself, Rick knew he didn't actually feel much different. His heart and mind were already a continent away. Still, there was a task to accomplish and he was damn well gonna do it.

Dixon had been quick to tally Dr. Mamet's fatal errors and Rick realized then, he was actually doing the same...only it was with his own.


	53. Chapter 53

May 10th 2011

 _Kyangwali Refugee Camp, Uganda_

Rick waited anxiously outside of Nyokato Mongala's tent as a gaggle of women discussed things just inside the mouth of it. He watched as they stood deciding on the formalities of this odd request while the woman in question lay sick within, largely unaware, he imagined, that she was the topic of such intense negotiation.

 _Nyokato Mongala…_

It was a nice name he'd decided overnight while his unquiet mind darted from issue to issue allowing no moment to sleep. It was lyrical, although not in the way most Westerners thought of the word. Not as if it rolled easily off his Southern tongue and soared upward. But in a way that sounded like rhythm, like soft, melodic percussion when said repeatedly by the native speakers of her language. As he lay in his tent the night before, he practiced saying it again and again, moving his lips silently to form the letters correctly as he'd heard them. He wanted to say it right. He owed her that much at least, he decided. But he intended to do far more than the least. If she could somehow point him and his wayward group in the right direction, he'd already made peace within himself, that he'd do anything she asked. What that might be, he had no idea but, if she asked it….

 _...Nyokato Mongala._

He tried it again now, along with a whole sentence in Lingala that Michonne had taught him long ago, pacing. He looked at his watch again, marshaling his reserve of patience with the process of negotiating an early morning audience with the elderly woman. He meant no disrespect but he was about a minute off of bursting in there himself, custom be damned, welcomed or not. It was only his years of observing Michonne's own subtle use of persuasion and diplomacy to grease wheels that kept him from following his impulse.

Ms. Mongala's niece, Merveille, was extremely protective of her octogenarian aunt, which Rick could certainly understand. Given the circumstances that led to them being in the camp in the first place, he was aware that questions, particularly the ones coming from any officials would be viewed with suspicion. But just because he was sympathetic and deeply respectful, it didn't mean that at that moment Rick was at all willing to take no for an answer. Michonne's safety and getting some clue that could lead to her location was all he could spare room in his mind for. Luckily, it seemed the same was also true for Maggie and Amy, who took the lead in negotiating and had been talking for fifteen minutes with the young woman about gaining access to her aunt.

He stood there, arms akimbo, favoring one leg heavily and tapping his index finger impatiently against the rough-patterned grooves worn into his leather belt. He was going stir crazy. He considered again just pleading his case directly to Merveille. The woman looked easy enough: plainly dressed, pretty in an unassuming way, fine-boned and slight but with small, keen eyes that suggested that perhaps looks were deceiving. But given the over twenty minutes they'd already spent talking with her, it occurred to Rick that there was something deeper going on.

Maggie turned to him then, as she had been periodically, to shrug and wordlessly plead for just a little more patience on his part. It had worked at defusing him the first four times. Now, it almost made him angrier. He reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose. Michonne and Maggie were his paragons, where calm, perfect composure was concerned– a trait he would have sworn was the province of women alone, if not for their colleagues Aaron and Gabriel. Still, Rick knew if even Maggie, ever understanding yet resolute, was ready to figuratively throw up her hands then this endeavor was near failure.

He walked closer within the small perimeter he'd unwittingly created around Nyokato's tent with his constant movement. Curious neighbors had stood at a distance watching the developments unfold. He and they perked up as Merveille turned away and went back into her tent. Maggie came out of the entryway and met him halfway.

"What's the problem?" He'd thought finding the previously nameless woman who could lead them in the right direction was going to be _the_ challenge of this part of their journey. Obviously, he was wrong.

Maggie shrugged again before letting her arms fall heavily to her sides. "Trust. They just got here a month ago, she doesn't know who she can trust yet."

"The niece, Merveille?" He asked, confirming the impression that he'd gotten of her.

To his surprise, Maggie shook her head, "No, old Mrs. Mongala, I think."

She sighed deeply, actually throwing up her hands then and looking forlornly at something far down the long aisle of anonymous tents. Rick put a hand on Maggie's shoulder, squeezing it and bending slightly to catch her eyes. Her eyebrows were furrowed and her expression darkened in frustration. This experience seemed like it was physically aging her as they spoke. Even the shoulder he held was like granite beneath his fingers. He'd forgotten momentarily that Maggie had as much, possibly more, riding on this than he did.

"It's okay." He said in deference to her valiant effort, not because he actually felt that way.

Maggie shook her head again, clearly struggling with some undeclared emotion. Yet Rick understood completely. On the one hand, they needed to find Michonne. On the other, finding her more concretely implicated Shane in her disappearance and further indicted them for their ignorance. For all his seething animosity toward his best friend and relentless drive to uncover Michonne's whereabouts, he felt troublesomely ambivalent about aspects of this whole endeavor.

"I'm gonna try," He announced, letting his hand drop to his side. Maggie opened her mouth to voice an objection that he left behind as he moved past her. He walked purposefully to the tent just as Amy, Lady and Mathilde emerged from the mouth of it.

"Rick?" Amy said surprised as if she didn't expect to see him there where she'd left him a half hour ago. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to try myself." He said pushing past her. "I have to."

She held up a hand to his chest, "She's gonna be afraid of you, Rick."

"Of me?" He repeated bewildered. "She doesn't know me."

Suddenly, it came back to him. The distrustful way the woman had looked at him that night Michonne introduced them. The way Michonne had had to tactfully send him on his way to have a conversation with her.

 _But why?_

As he said before, he had never set eyes on Nyokato Mongala before that night. At the time, he shrugged her reaction off. It wasn't worth being upset over. And given the atrocities some members of the camps had endured, an aversion to men in general or armed military or both was pretty much par for the course. He'd learned long ago not to take that personally. _But now this somehow felt different. This somehow_ felt _personal._

"You told her we need to locate Ariane? That Michonne was missing?" He asked, turning to Mathilde to ensure that nothing had been lost in translation.

The woman nodded, her face grim, "Yes sir."

"Then, I have to try, please..." He said again to the three women as if it could make a difference. Amy looked at Lady, who seemed to understand, if not the words, then the sentiment, the sheer desperation that shaded the words. She shrugged at Amy. Acquiescence or no, that was all the go-ahead Rick required.

The tent wasn't big but it was organized in a way that suggested an actual home, with an obvious living space separated from its sleeping quarters. It was drearily lit by a small, most likely illegal kerosene lamp that cast long, wavy shadows across the room. Rick could make out Merveille's back as she kneeled facing away from him. Dimly, he could also discern the foot of a small camp-issued cot against the far wall. He pushed cautiously through the mosquito netting and entered more fully.

"Rick!" Maggie said more urgently from right behind him.

He paused and looked back to see a trio of concerned faces standing at the entryway. And then one that was only mildly intrigued... _Lady_. They regarded each other briefly. Then she chirped brightly to Mathilde, who translated with a crooked smile to Maggie, "She said, 'go ahead and let him. _Mundele_ always think they can do anything anyway. Maybe, for once, he's right'."

Rick reddened, knowing that that was what most Congolese called oblivious and obnoxious White people. _Was he being obnoxious and ridiculous to think he could add anything of value to the conversation?_ In that second, without ever having spoken to her directly, Rick could see very clearly what Michonne might have liked about the woman. She was confident and had no issue with speaking her mind. As he watched, Lady continued to observe him with an obvious primary interest in seeing how this would all play out.

 _Why_ did _he believe he could plead their case better than either Amy or Maggie had already spent thirty minutes doing?_

"I'm sorry," He said to Maggie with a sigh but without being sorry in the least. "I _have_ to try. If I upset her, I'll leave. That's it."

Merveille must have heard the masculine voice behind her because she turned then and suddenly got to her feet. Rick raised his hands defensively, palms out. Her brows knitted together in irritation.

"Wait, wait, I just want five minutes of her time."

Mathilde translated from a foot behind him, seemingly reticent to reenter the tent fully. Merveille's eyes narrowed, annoyance written on her face. She spoke rapidly, clearly galled by the intrusion. She put herself fully between her aunt and Rick. And despite being nearly twice her size, Rick felt the warning in her stance.

"Tell her, this is serious. Our friend Michonne might die." Rick didn't want to use those words in front of Maggie, had refrained from using those words because of the implication. Still, it felt like the only thing that might make a difference...and as the hours ticked by, as much as he was loath to admit it, it seemed more and more like the truth.

"She was snatched right off the street. No one has seen her in five days," He spoke quickly but Mathilde was able to keep up with him, relaying his words to Merveille. "We think that she might have been taken by Pop Negan's men. We think your aunt might be the only person who knows where he is, where _she_ is."

Merveille's eyes widened when the name came through the chaos of Rick and Mathilde's competing narration. He realized then that Maggie had somehow managed to leave some part of that out. No doubt to keep from frightening her too much.

She shook her head adamantly.

"My aunt cannot help you." She said through Mathilde.

"I have to find her." He declared.

" _We_ have to find her." He corrected himself, realizing yet again that he had to stop acting as if this wasn't a coalition effort.

 _He wasn't in this alone._ It wasn't only him that was restless in their desire to get Michonne back. Maggie was as well, so was Amy. Even Carter, despite his torrent of bullshit, had looked haunted when Rick saw him earlier that morning.

Rick went on calmly despite Merveille's continued objection, "I think you already know, if we're right, she's in danger. I think my friend to–"

"If you're right, she's already dead," Mathilde spoke over his statement then, automatically repeating Merveille's harsh words.

Rick reflexively looked behind himself at Mathilde, still standing unobtrusively at the entrance of the tent as if she weren't right in the midst and a crucial component of the conversation. She looked stricken as if she would have liked to snatch the statement right out of the air between them if she could.

He looked back at Merveille, stunned by her callousness but now prepared to take another, much less patient and cordial tack. Thankfully, in that moment, there was movement and soft whispering from behind her. Merveille returned to her aunt's side. Rick stood there, paused as if in mid-thought, waiting to resume their argument. Because at that point, there could be no illusion their exchange was anything but.

Mathilde moved in closer to Rick, to see if she could soak up some of the conversation happening quietly between the woman and her aunt.

"She's telling her, 'it's not worth the risk'," Mathilde said under her breath, leaning into Rick's side. "Saying, 'it's best not to get involved'."

Rick thought to interject but Mathilde grasped his forearm.

"I have 'aunties' like this," Mathilde whispered with a reassuring nod. "Just wait."

Another minute of indecipherable whispering followed, then Merveille gave a frustrated sigh and rose to her feet. When she looked at him, Rick could see his victory written in the exasperation and trepidation warring for supremacy on her face. "She will speak with you."

She stood to the side and let Rick and Mathilde pass. They walked to the edge of the curtain separating the small cots from the rest of the space. Rick noticed the small outline of another figure lying in the cot beside Ms. Mongala. The head of a child peeked out from amongst a mound of rags used as bedding.

"What's this?" Rick whispered urgently to Mathilde.

"There's been an outbreak of dysentery in the camp for the past month. It's been largely contained, but it hit the very old and the very young the hardest."

Rick felt particularly callous that this hadn't even been on his radar. He approached Ms. Mongala kneeling beside her cot as Mathilde stood behind him.

" _Mboté,_ " He used a polite greeting. Rick introduced himself in the Lingala that Michonne had taught him long ago and that he'd spent the past night practicing before careering through a plea for her aid that he got from a translation book. Mathilde opened her mouth then closed it as he tore through the phrasing without her help.

"Please stop," Ms. Mongala surprised him by interrupting him mid-sentence. "I also speak English, French or Swahili, if you prefer. But not whatever _that_ , you're saying, is.

"I taught children at _L'école Belge de Goma_ for many years." She spoke in a hoarse whisper but Rick could still hear the teasing in her tone, "...and your Lingala _still_ hurts my ears."

Rick glanced up at Mathilde to see if she agreed and saw only her pursing her lips and covering them with her fingertips. He smiled despite himself, shaking his head slightly, "Mrs. Mongala–"

"You pronounce that much, _much_ better, but it's Nyokato, if you please. _Madam_ Mongala is now and forever my mother. May God rest her soul."

Mathilde tapped Rick's shoulder lightly to signal her exit to him. _Even if he wasn't entirely certain what was going to happen, Nyokato, inexplicably, seemed to have a good grasp on things_.

"Okay, _Nyokato_ ," he began taking a breath. "I'm Rick Grimes. I'm Michonne's friend. Do you remember me?"

The old woman shifted on the cot, turning herself so that she faced him, her eyes squinting to make him out in the poor lighting. Rick reached over on his hands and knees and carefully pulled the heavy lamp over toward them. His boot tips scraped against the dirt floor and the oil sloshed inside the lamp canister loudly, giving the space the noxious odor of kerosene. The older woman watched him with interest, her eyes following his movements, though she didn't move.

"Do you remember?" He asked again, once the lamp was sufficiently close.

"Hmmm," Nyokato raised her head up from the pillow and peered at him blankly.

"Better yet, do you even remember Michonne? The UN worker? She visited a month ago?" Nyokato continued to stare. "Michonne?"

" _See_ , she doesn't know what you're talking about," Merveille spoke up suddenly from the corner of the room, startling Rick because he'd forgotten she was still there. He didn't bother to remark on the fact that her English was suddenly as good as her aunt's.

"She originally met you in your village with Maggie?" Rick continued undeterred, pointing at the entrance to the tent as if to illustrate. "The brunette girl outside?"

Nyokato watched him talk, her eyes fixated on his lips, but offered no reply.

Rick sat back on his heels trying to figure another way to engage her. A minute ago she had seemed as sharp as a tack and now Nyokato silently worked her lips over her gums not unlike a cow ruminating over cud.

"It's important that we find her."

Rick chose to plug on as if the woman hadn't abruptly gone senile in the last five minutes. "As I told your niece, she's gone missing. We think she's been taken to wherever it is that Negan is based. I hoped you might know where that is."

"Why?" Merveille interjected urgently.

"Because," He sighed at the question, but kept his attention and his eyes on the aunt, not the niece. "Ariane lives there too, I think."

"You _think_?" Merveille repeated scornfully, sounding to Rick's ears exactly like a female Carter Embry.

"We know Ariane is his wife."

"And so? That has nothing to do with us."

"I think it does and I think your aunt knows what I'm asking her." He spoke to Merveille but refused to look at her, still trying to engage Nyokato. "It was Ariane that Michonne and Maggie came to your village with and it was her they were trying to help that got them in trouble with Pop Negan."

He struggled to keep the strange and inexplicable resentment he always felt whenever he thought about that whole situation out of his voice.

"Ariane and her family were our neighbors, nothing mo–"

"Describe her for me." The old woman relented finally, interrupting them both as if they weren't arguing.

Rick sighed again deeply, putting his hands on his thighs. He squeezed them to keep from shouting at someone. "She's about 5'8", your complexion–"

"Is that the best you can do?" Nyokato asked.

Rick stopped short. He did not have time for continued game-playing. _If_ _this was what Maggie and Amy had faced earlier, a furtive contest of wills they'd both been ill-equipped to win, he could suddenly understand their frustrated resignation._

Rick ran an exasperated hand through his moist hair. The early morning's dense humidity and the tent's lack of adequate ventilation conspired to plaster his hair to his forehead. The first rainfall of the day couldn't come soon enough to dispel some of the heavy, near claustrophobic warmth enveloping him.

"I don't think I understand. I was describing her."

"I am an old woman and you were describing nearly a hundred women I've met at this camp in the past week alone. You want to refresh my memory?"

 _At least her wits were back..._ He thought _._ Although he was fairly certain they hadn't gone anywhere in the first place.

Rick bit down on his lower lip to curb his tongue, "Yes."

"Then describe _her."_

 _He told himself he'd do anything to get Michonne back, but_ _now it was clear to him that he'd had no idea what that actually meant._

He blew out a heavy breath and hung his head. Though nearly every part of him hummed with impatience at Nyokato's request and a thousand disparate thoughts in the meantime fought for primacy, Rick surprised even himself by being able to answer the old woman's question thoughtfully.

"She's my friend of many years."

"You said _that_ already."

Before opening his mouth again, he took a beat to pray for forbearance. In her slyly cunning way, Nyokato suddenly reminded Rick of the older women he'd known all his life at home in Georgia. Southern belles, the lot of them, sweet as peach cobbler, all 'dah-lin's" and "sugahs" until you crossed them. None more so than his adoptive Gran'ma Jean before the dementia set in. The fleeting recollection of Shane's grandmother set Rick's teeth on edge but focused his thoughts.

"Well, _first off_ , there aren't a hundred women like Michonne in this camp," Rick spoke shortly as if he were admonishing Nyokato for her mistake. "...or anywhere else for that matter."

And to his surprise, the woman's eyes brightened as if that had been precisely what she was waiting for. He continued, encouraged.

"She's kind, patient and soft-spoken but tough. So strong...scary strong _and brave_ that I worry for her all the time, not just when it's my job to. But she's sweet too and far too trusting of people she doesn't know. I warn her constantly about that, but she says I don't trust _enough_. And she's got such a dry sense of humor; she joking half the time she's talking but most people wouldn't know it. The other half of the time, she's got this great big laugh and a bigger smile. _All teeth_. She'll give you anything she has and not ask for anything in return but that you do the same for someone else."

He knew he was rambling but it was his first opportunity to say all the things that had been rattling around in his brain for so long. And the old woman just sat silently listening.

"Michonne's biggest flaw, I think, is that she's always been loyal to a fault. Which is why she might be in the trouble she's in right now. She thought she knew something. Something that would hurt me, hurt our friends but she wouldn't share it because I think she thought she was protecting me. And protecting that girl out there that you met, Maggie. That's how you and she met. She thinks of _everyone_ before herself. She took Ariane back home, at great personal risk and cost… and now here we are."

He looked up at Nyokato finally from the place his mind's eye had wandered thinking of Michonne to find her nodding encouragingly.

"It's my job, it's _been_ my job for the last seven-plus years, to keep her safe and, well, right now, for the past five days– _shit_ , let's be honest, since before I even met you last month, since that day you met her in your village– I've been failing at my job, spectacularly."

Rick looked away then. And a single tear, composed of his anxiety and abject frustration with the many dead ends of his search and given form by his fear for her well-being, slid from the corner of his eye over his cheek. He rubbed it away roughly with his shoulder to his head, embarrassed that the old woman had to see it.

"I don't believe that. You are doing what you can. I'd guess you always do." Nyokato's soft, wrinkled hand reached out from beneath her sheet and covered his then.

"Oh, yes that's right, of course, _you_ ," She declared loudly enough for her niece to overhear while nodding vigorously at him as if she was just remembering him.

 _He doubted that._

"She had said you weren't like the other one. I remember now...I remember her. Michonne, you said her name was? Yes. You came to collect her the night we met. She made you wait."

 _The other one?_ Rick wanted to ask but didn't dare derail her now that Nyokato had finally decided to acknowledge him.

He exhaled the breath he felt like he'd been holding since he got up that morning. "Yes."

"Meri," Nyokato announced, summoning her niece. "We are going to help RickGrimes find the _mademoiselle_. I'm going to tell you both what I know. And then you and he are going to go find a map."

* * *

Rick exited the tent to see the crowd had expanded to many of Nyokato's numerous neighbors that he didn't know and five anxious faces that he did. They could have all been standing outside an operating room awaiting a prognosis, their expressions were so dour and apprehensive. Maggie and Amy looked at him expectantly and when he finally smiled in confirmation they clasped hands and laughed. As Rick approached them, he paused briefly to thank Lady in exceedingly poor Swahili.

The woman nodded and smiled very obviously impressed by his persuasiveness.

"What's the verdict?" Carter, having just joined them minutes earlier, asked walking up to him. He surprised Rick by handing him a metal mug filled with steaming hot coffee.

"Thanks." Rick nodded, taking the cup and having a quick sip. He grimaced as Carter shrugged unapologetically. It was the same swill that one could find in every Armed Forces canteen from Kisangani to Okinawa. Still, Rick appreciated the unexpected peace-offering. "You got a couple Z-packs?"

Carter's face was a question mark but in a moment he called to his second, Barnes, anyway. "You didn't answer my question."

Carter took the heavy duffel Barnes carried from him and rifled through the contents before handing a small stack of Azithromycin blister packs to Rick.

"We're headed into the jungle." Rick finally answered Carter, handing the stainless-steel coffee cup back to him with one hand and taking the antibiotics from him with the other.

"Yes, thanks. That's really specific," Carter called after him with a mildly amused expression as Rick walked away from him without elaborating. Carter sighed loudly, overturning Rick's cup to empty it and passing it off to Barnes. Rick walked back to the tent flap just as Merveille was exiting.

"Thank your aunt again for helping us. I'm sorry about your little girl," He discreetly placed the packs in her hands. "Give some of these to them, stash the rest and then come meet us by the _Medecins sans Frontieres_ intake office." He instructed her quietly as she stared at the items dumbfounded.

Rick walked away then feeling ready, finally, to rally his group. Feeling, at last, as if he had some small idea of what he was doing and where he was going.

...but he had more than just an 'idea' of where he was going. If Nyokato's information was accurate, they could reach Negan's camp by nightfall. He prayed for Michonne's sake and his own that she was there. And he prayed for the sake of everyone there that she was unharmed.


	54. Chapter 54

_7/28/15 17:59 GMT_

 _Deptford, Aberdeenshire, Scotland_

"SatNav says, it's in the next valley. Three klicks, as the crow flies." Daryl announced to the group, having briefly taken over navigational duties from Rick.

Rick wasn't foolish enough to feel relief at the Lance Corporal's words but they gave him a small degree of satisfaction. _They were almost there._ As they had moved further inland and away from the city-proper, the terrain had begun to live up to its name, presenting them increasing numbers of rolling, chartreuse hills and umber dales. At the same time, the local population, as signified by shambling, near torpid bodies that proved relatively easy to evade, seemed to decrease. It was true, the Highlands _were_ quiet. Although that seemed to be more a function of its smaller population than some sort of imperviousness to the disease. In fact, the only visible evidence that anything had changed at all was the near staggering number of dead animals that littered the lawns, fields and small winding lanes that dotted and crisscrossed the countryside.

Not eaten but bitten and sometimes eviscerated, the animals– as large as livestock and as small as wild hares– bore witness to the new savagery that had taken over. "Bunny Homicide", Daryl had jokingly called it when they encountered that first rabbit. By the tenth, however, they had all fallen silent, cognizant that it wasn't only animals that were meeting that particular grizzly fate.

As if illustrating that, coming upon a small dairy farm, Rick had spied the leg of a teddy bear and a pint-sized pair of pale hands jutting out from beneath the family Land Rover. He and Dixon were, unfortunately, unable to distract Carol enough to miss seeing it. After Rick dispatched the little thing, 'Young children are not of sufficient size to sustain the virus', was all the explanation Milton had offered them and all the conversation on the topic any of them could abide. Still, the incident angered Rick. He felt strongly that Carol, as the mother of a presumably dead child, should not have been forced to see something like that. But as with everything now, he'd been powerless to prevent it.

Like anyone else, Rick knew of such things as 'widows' and 'orphans', but what did you even call a parent that had lost a child? _It seemed there should be a name for that,_ he thought to himself. And the very fact that there wasn't one seemed less a failure of language and more proof-positive that even natural law found that situation abhorrent.

Even a half hour later, Rick was still thinking about it as they moved through the desolate landscape. Luckily, they had been gifted with another torrential downpour in the early evening that helped to keep things blessedly uneventful. It gave his mind time to wander to things like that and continued thoughts of Carl and Judith. After the rain, the sun hung low in the sky, as it came on six o'clock, making only brief appearances behind tall, billowy, dark gray nimbus stormclouds that filled the sky.

Unfortunately, the rainstorm also meant that what should have been a two-hour walk stretched toward four-plus hours of muddy drudgery. And though his constant complaining hadn't helped things, Rick couldn't lay the blame for the interminably miserable journey entirely at Dr. Mamet's feet. He was forced to admit that he had lost a step or two due to the injuries he'd sustained on the plane as well as just general fatigue.

"We okay, Doctor?" Rick chose that moment to check in with Mamet. The man had seemed to get more agitated as the trip progressed, muttering to himself and pawing at his face with increasing frequency.

Milton looked at Rick with surprise to find him there, as if they hadn't been walking side by side for the better part of three hours.

"W-what?"

"I asked if you were okay? Do you need anything? We can't stop yet but do you need a granola bar or some water, _anything_?" Rick pulled a small extra bottle of water that he had out of his pack and extended it to the doctor.

"NO!" Mamet nearly bellowed, taking Rick aback. "No, no, I'm fine." He collected himself quickly.

"I-I'm fine. I don't want anything."

Rick looked at the doctor's face more carefully, in a way he hadn't in hours. Milton spoke between clenched teeth, which was hardly a surprise. His face was puffy and swollen, bound tightly beneath his bandages. But now vivid, purple veins webbed across his cheek, extending in small windy tributaries up from his wound into his hairline and down onto his neck. His eyes were bloodshot, with a completely blown capillary in the eye above his injury. In that eye, his iris swam in a field of red behind his haphazardly-repaired glasses.

"You sure, Doc?" Carol added right then, seeing perhaps what Rick did.

She had been judiciously keeping a relative distance since he was bitten, but in that moment Carol approached the doctor and tenderly placed the back of her hand to his forehead.

"Milt, you're burning up." She said to him but locked eyes with Rick.

The implication was clear. _He was beginning to turn._

* * *

It took another fifty minutes to make it over and down the tall hill separating them from the little unassuming village in the valley. Charming, nearly identical houses dotted the hillside and the vale below. Set out like a giant timber-clad nautilus, houses and buildings were arranged along a collection of ever-circling lanes, dead-ending into quaint cul-de-sacs and spinning outward. The town itself looked to be a minor feat of highly aesthetic engineering. And to look at it, walking through a picturesque field of heather onto the main road, you would never have guessed some of the most deadly diseases known to mankind sat frozen, in small vials secreted away somewhere among them.

Rick wondered for a moment why that was. Why they kept such dangers in remote, nondescript hamlets like this one and the one near Karengera? But just as quickly he realized the havoc a runaway contagion could wreak in a more populous place. Hadn't he just seen it with his own eyes in the second great burning of Atlanta? Threats such as these had to be kept as far away from urban areas as possible...and this tiny community with its cow pastures, fishmonger and village bingo hall certainly fit the bill. He wondered how many of this town's denizens understood quite what the trade-off was for such _seemingly_ idyllic living.

"Look!" Milton exclaimed suddenly, pointing out something that Rick and the others had already clocked as soon as they set foot in town.

 _There were living, healthy people here._

"Put your hand down," Carol said under her breath, exactly as one might to a child. "Stop pointing."

Milton dropped his arm immediately, chastened.

But he was correct. The townspeople only made themselves known by curtains that seemed sway on their own and door bolts that fastened audibly as Rick's group passed by, in shades that moved down and glimpses of faces that disappeared from view as soon as you turned to see them. Somehow, it seemed, the village was untouched, which Rick found particularly ironic, given what it played host to.

"I wonder how that is?" Mamet began muttering to himself again. Something he was doing with increasing frequency.

Daryl exchanged a look with Carol that Rick caught. They were thinking the same thing he was. The doctor's transformation seemed to be progressing faster than Dr. Maitland's had, inexplicably. The fact that they still couldn't accurately account for how long the turn took, between seconds and hours aggravated Rick...and sent his mind, again, to his kids on a ship virtually alone.

The group turned off the deserted main road and cut through a small Anglican churchyard to the fenced-in, midsized industrial park along the far side. Still, they remained unaccosted by anything besides a stray calico cat that followed them at a distance.

"He's a survivor." Rick noted amused.

"It's probably been a few days since he's been fed." Daryl said leaving a piece of a sandwich from his pack on the side of the road.

"Lazy thing," Carol remarked, shifting her large gun from one shoulder to the other. "He better redevelop a taste for mice."

She still gave a rare genuine smile as she watched the small animal begin to slowly follow behind Dixon particularly. "Aww, D looks like you started another love affair you won't know how to end."

Daryl looked up at her then and frowned tipping his head toward Rick and Milton.

"Head's up. We're here." Rick announced rather redundantly instead of trying to decipher the exchange he'd just witnessed.

Carol's smile fell from her face and she turned back toward the direction they were headed. The cat did similarly turning off from them and scampering away as they scaled the chest-high chain link fence to get inside.

A large modernist structure loomed in front of them as they moved through the expansive carpark. At full capacity, the parking lot seemed to indicate that the entire town was employed here...and then some. A cluster of smaller structures surrounded a main office building made up of three stories of concrete, sleek glass and shiny steel. The main building itself lay separate, behind an eight-foot high concrete security fence. They walked up to it, then along the perimeter until they came upon the gate at the entrance. The World Health Organization plaque sat above a touchtone keypad. Rick looked around and hefted his sack further on his back before stepping forward to press the call button.

A moment later, the heavy metal gate buzzed open. Rick looked at his companions and saw the identical thought rattle through their brains.

 _That's it?_

* * *

Rick took the lead through an ornate copper and stone sculpture garden in the courtyard at the front of the building. A large bowl-shaped fountain that resembled some sort of futurist cradle still overflowed with water as they walked into the empty atrium of the building. Their footfalls resounded, bouncing off the pale travertine walls and floor. Rick stopped to look around the expansive space. Someone had let them in so someone had to be there but it seemed entirely sterile and abandoned anyway.

Daryl dipped his hands in the shallow fountain then rubbed and inspected his fingers as if he suspected it was filled with something other than water.

"So, where's our welcome wagon?" Carol asked looking around.

"We're up on the third floor," The answer came through the public address system with the voice of a woman. "I'll meet you on the mezzanine level."

Dixon sighed as they moved toward the stairs following the voice.

"It's like every asshole on the planet suddenly turned into the Wizard of-muthafuckin'-Oz," He grumbled.

Rick and Carol both snorted involuntarily while Milton remained increasingly in his own world.

"Captain Grimes?" The voice asked overhead.

"Here." Rick waved his hand simply as they cleared the first set of steps toward the Mezzanine to identify himself.

A lone figure, a woman, stood there patiently, hands clasped behind her back, waiting along the railing overlooking the atrium. The whole experience was eerily similar to the USAMRIID site, except in every way that counted. Though she was alone to meet the group as Scott had been, there was no trace of the fear in her that had radiated off the nurse. Then there was the fact that she looked like she worked at a library not a medical facility.

She had short, shaggy, chestnut brown curls that fell into her huge eyes of an identical color. A shock of freckles dotted her honey-brown face making her almost childlike in her attractiveness as she stood in her floor-length skirt and tan cashmere twinset. Even the offices themselves had none of the austere utility of the Army site, with its soft ecru, sage and calming periwinkle blue color scheme. In that moment, it felt like a place Rick had been to a million times before, even though he'd never set foot in the building before.

Rick walked straight to her. It all suddenly seemed almost mundanely routine. As if he were the UPS man with her Amazon Prime delivery and not a man carrying the vital piece of a crucial puzzle with him.

"Captain Grimes?" She said again extending her hand for him to shake formally. It seemed absurd but he did it anyway.

"And you are?"

"Dr. O'Hare, but call me Ruth." Her Irish brogue provided her high-pitched voice needed gravity.

Rick introduced them all and he watched as Ruth inspected Dr. Mamet closely while simultaneously exchanging greetings with everyone else. Her eyes remained on him even as she shook hands with Carol and Daryl. Rick watched as the smile strained on her face as she spoke with him after.

"Dr. Mamet, it's an honor to meet you. I actually attended a Society of Epidemiologic Research conference in Minnesota four years ago where you gave the keynote." Ruth tried to catch his attention, which seemed to wander away from her mid-sentence.

He dragged his hand when it wasn't holding hers across his injured cheek muttering something that ended with "boring statisticians."

She laughed genuinely after straining to hear what he had said. "I'd agree if I wasn't one of those boring statisticians myself."

"Please follow me. We've been waiting for you. Thank you so much for coming all this way." She turned then to lead them further into the building, missing the way Carol rolled her eyes and scoffed at her words.

"As if we just came from across town to bring this," Carol muttered.

"Did you say something?" Ruth turned her head to ask as she moved through the empty office toward an elevator bank in the back.

"Nope," Carol said pleasantly with a brief and entirely fake smile that disappeared as soon as Ruth's back was turned.

Michonne had told Rick about this side of Carol the night before. The wholly counterfeit part of the woman that smiled easily and spoke mildly but he just couldn't believe Michonne when she told him. There was no part of Carol that to him seemed pleasant and easy-going, only calm, shrewd and somewhat coldly calculating. He shook his head at the memory and smiled to himself. _As usual, Michonne was right._

"I was wondering how many of you there are left?" Rick asked of Ruth as they traveled up the two floors in the elevator.

"About thirty," She estimated then grimly added, "We're a staff of a three hundred usually."

Normally, hearing that only ten percent of the staff was left would seem like the literal decimation it was but things had changed so dramatically in only days. Now thirty still alive amongst a group of scientists was pretty impressive to Rick. The USAMRIID site hadn't done as well and most of them were supposedly Army officers. He looked around as they stepped off the elevator. The place looked pretty pristine for having lost a full two-thirds of its staff.

"Some didn't even make it in. Some left to be with their families once we realized what was happening. The rest we incinerated." Ruth added, presumably reading his face.

"Incinerated?" Daryl said, still eyeing the exits as they passed them walking through the hall.

"All facilities like this have rooms in which we can incinerate biologically hazardous materials."

"You have a crematorium?" Carol clarified.

"Of course. We couldn't bury or safely dispose of the specimens we have here otherwise. But I'm not talking about the crematorium. In our facility, we have controlled incineration at one station per lab. Some places have whole incineration rooms. Our physical plant has one large incinerator for medical waste...that's where we did it."

Ruth's voice trailed off as she clearly re-lived burning her former colleagues to death.

"We're just here." She perked up quickly, sliding the ID card she had on a lanyard around her neck through a keycard lock and pushing the door open.

Rick followed her in and a second too late felt the gun at his temple. The voice attached to it spoke smoothly, reaching with his other hand for the rifle that swung harmlessly at Rick's side.

"That looks heavy, Captain. Let me help you with it."


	55. Chapter 55

* **Author's Note** *

Hey Folks, I know I promised you all an unbroken string of updates until the bitter (or not-so-bitter) end but unfortunately, I might have to take a small break. I promise to be back as soon as possible (and if by some chance there's no break, all the better.) But I just didn't want you guys seeing no update next week and wondering what's happened. Like I said, it might not happen but just in case, I wanted you all to know. Okay, that's it. Love you for reading and appreciate you for sticking with me.

May 10th 2011

 _Location Unknown, DRC_

Michonne was reading by lamplight when the sound of a scuffle outside her door pierced the silence and made her jump up from her bed.

"Fabian?" She called out to him. François had been gone a half hour but as they did normally, she and Fabian remained on their respective sides of the door until it was late. That way they insured no unexpected visitors happening upon them. "Fabian? _Ça va_?"

There was no response other than the sounds of someone being beaten. Michonne didn't need to think hard before she knew without question who it was. Poor Fabian was no match for _any_ of the brutes in this camp but certainly not for the man Michonne now knew was on the other side of the door. She looked around quickly for somewhere to hide or something to defend herself with. But the room was sparse, deliberately so. She scrambled to the bureau and grabbed the sharpened chicken bone she'd kept hidden there, behind the back leg. It was brittle and hollow and no defense against a bullet but it was something. For a minute, she considered hiding in that corner between the wall and the largest piece of furniture in the room but knew that was the first place he would look.

No, her best bet was to be waiting right behind the door for him. She pulled one shelf out of the bureau and dumped the very meager contents onto her bed and then held it. It wasn't much but it would hurt. She stood behind the door with her back to the wall and waited. Through the door she could hear Fabian's grunts from the blows he was receiving and her heart ached for the boy. She wanted to cry out to him again but now that would give away her position and she needed the element of surprise. Still, it was agonizing to hear him being beaten.

 _This was precisely what she'd warned Oné about._

Her heart flew to her throat as the sounds of the beating stopped and the work on the lock began. Then slowly, the doorknob began to turn. Michonne held her breath. Raising the shelf over her head, she waited patiently as the door creaked open. All she needed was for him to peek his head inside and she would have him...hopefully.

"Get from behind the door unless you want some hot lead in your pretty little ass, 'Chonne."

Michonne grimaced with frustration but said nothing, remaining where she stood.

For a fraction of a moment the only sound in the room was that of the hammer on his gun cocking on the other side of the door.

"I mean it now, git."

Michonne grit her teeth in frustration, easing the shelf down onto the floor quietly at her feet.

"Lemme see them hands first. C'mon out here."

Michonne tucked the chicken bone in her bra quickly and came slowly out from behind the door with her hands outstretched as instructed.

"Good girl." Shane said watching her carefully.

He moved the gun from pointing toward the door and trained it on her as she moved toward the center of the room. If looks could kill Michonne was certain her expression would have made Shane's head explode but perversely he only looked amused. He came more fully into the room and kicked the door closed behind him. With the gun still trained on her, he glanced into the corner behind the door and saw the shelf she'd had waiting for him propped up against the wall.

He chuckled, shaking his head. "You are so smart." He said it like a compliment but Michonne knew it was an insult. "So smart but you can't let any-fuckin'-thing go. Even when it doesn't concern you."

Michonne remained silent judging the success of suddenly rushing him in an effort to escape. It was a no go, his finger sat on the trigger. _There was no question, he was prepared to shoot her._

"This could have all been done. I was leaving next week. If you could have just let it go."

"I did let it go! Despite every instinct in me that told me you were dirty. I did!" Michonne snapped unable to hold her peace when she heard the self-pitying tone in Shane's voice.

"No," He shook his head. "No, you were still digging. Breaking into my desk and showing Maggie that matchbook, asking her to find out what Lausanne was."

Michonne actually laughed, which surprised both of them. "Idiot."

Shane stepped forward menacing her with the gun. "Don't you fucking laugh at me."

Michonne sobered quickly and sighed, "I didn't tell Maggie about that. She showed it to _me_! In fact, I'm the one who told her to leave it alone...but you know Maggie she's like a dog with a bone. I—"

"Just, just stop it okay? I caught you eavesdropping downstairs at the engagement party. All the questions and the digging, it was all because of you. You knew what was going on..."

"Shane, I swear to God, I didn't." Michonne tried to refute it all but Shane wasn't listening.

"...It was you who sicced Stavros and Matt on the operation. You, who dragged Maggie to that little bitch's village. You who set Rick sniffing around my files. You. Look at it, Michonne. _This is all your fault._ "

He sat down in the lone chair in the room and then gestured with his gun for her to sit on the bed directly across from him. She complied feeling as if he'd knocked the wind out of her.

Michonne knew she shouldn't be taking anything Shane said seriously or to heart but there was a kernel of truth in his words and it cut her to the quick. This _was_ all her fault. She did make this bed whether or not Shane had all the precise details of it correct or not. It had been all her digging and questioning and inability to mind her own business that started this whole out of control boulder rolling downhill.

 _He was right about that_.

"Now everything is for shit." There was genuine despair in Shane's voice as he said that. He hung his head as if defeated. His words and eyes both thick with unshed tears. "And I hurt Rick...bad."

Michonne's stomach clenched. She'd been confident after Shane's disheveled entrance the night before that Rick was hot on his tail but the remorse in Shane's tone gave her pause.

"What did you do, Shane?" Michonne demanded.

"I hurt him." Shane's voice was childlike as it finally broke and tears slipped down his face. "He came to me and he knew... _everything_. We fought and I hurt him real bad."

Shane's shoulders shook with his crying. The gun propped up on the armrest leaned listlessly to the side as if Shane were running out of gas. There was a moment of distraction there, if Michonne wanted to grasp for it, but she was immobilized by fear. Not for herself but for Rick. _Had Shane killed him or left him bleeding out somewhere_?

"Is he alive?"

Shane screwed up his face at the question, suddenly livid with indignation. He brushed the tears away from his face roughly. " _Yes_. I didn't kill him."

Relief flooded her. For that moment, she'd been more concerned about Rick's life than even her own.

"Don't worry. I wouldn't make your baby an orphan." He spat the words at her filled with contempt.

Despite everything, Michonne had to fight the impulse to tell him the truth. She didn't want anyone, but particularly Shane, thinking Rick would break faith with their beloved Lori. Of all things, Michonne didn't want her name mixed up in that. It was admittedly a ridiculous notion given her situation but she didn't want to further confirm all the stupid rumors about her and Rick that she knew swirled around the Mission.

"Thank you," was all she said instead.

"Don't you _thank me_. I didn't do it for you. I did it because Rick is my best friend and I would never hurt him."

 _Was he for real?_ Michonne couldn't help the bitter smirk. "You don't think you didn't hurt him already, before yesterday and Maggie too?"

"Shut the fuck up! Don't say her name, don't even talk about her. I'm warning you, Michonne." The gun straightened then from its listless near horizontal position before. "You fucked up everything."

"No, Shane, _you_ did that. Long before I got involved when you decided to get into bed with Ngangabouka in the first place." She said it boldly, goading him.

"I SAID SHUT UP!" He bellowed.

Shane leapt from his chair and pounced on her driving her back onto the bed and putting the gun right in Michonne's face under her chin. "You shut your goddamned mouth, _whore_."

Michonne squeezed her eyes shut and turned away from him as Shane's 100-proof breath covered the side of her face. He held her arm tightly, his body covering hers across the bed. His forehead leaned heavily on hers as he breathed deeply like a rutting bull. She held absolutely still as he pushed the gun painfully into her jaw as if he wanted to drive the whole deadly implement up into her skull instead of just a bullet.

"You're jealous," She finally said between her teeth unable to move her already pained jaw.

"Jealous?" Shane laughed bitterly but eased the gun ever so slowly from her chin.

"Darlin', I could give a fuck about you."

"Not of him," She said, because she knew that was true. " _Of me_."

It had only just occurred to Michonne in that moment but his silence confirmed her suspicion was right. Whereas Lori had never been a threat to their life-long friendship, Michonne with her distaste for Shane, was perceived as a constant wedge between him and Rick. She always knew he thought so and she didn't mean to be. But she and Shane were just like oil and water. They were the very definition of the term "frenemies". As long as Shane was Shane and Michonne was Michonne, their little trio would never truly be The Three Amigos. But she had always thought they had tried, that they _both_ tried valiantly, for Rick's sake. Michonne guessed though that ultimately it had not been good enough. And though she didn't quite understand really why that mattered _this much_ , in this moment, it became clear that it did.

"Just do it, Shane. If you're going to do it, just do it or get off of me!" Michonne said finally opening her eyes again. One part of her was bluffing, the other part, entirely serious. She just wanted it over, one way or another. This was the conclusion she had struggled not to envision. So it was oddly fitting that Shane himself would pull the trigger.

"I should!"

"Do it!" She screamed, struggling beneath him. But he overpowered her, keeping her pressed beneath him immobilized. "DO IT!"

In that moment, they were both motivated by a deep loathing —of each other and themselves. Michonne could feel it radiating off the both of them and doing battle between their bodies. She kept her hands at her sides afraid to set off his gun in a struggle. Still, she bucked underneath him trying to bring her leg up to knee him in the groin. He moved too quickly shifting himself sideways while still keeping her pinned down.

"I SHOULD!"

They both panted in a sweat-soaked silence in the suffocatingly hot room.

"I should have fucked you too." He lamented nastily in her ear like a threat.

"You could have tried and then I would have been able to finally geld you like you always deserved," Michonne retorted, her own clear threat.

"You could still try." She whispered nastily right back at him.

Shane chuckled and finally let his body slide off Michonne's, taking the gun away. He exhaled as if exhausted by their brief struggle. She propped herself up on her elbows as he rose to a sitting position next to her on the bed, the gun still trained on her. They just stared at each other. Those words had no teeth and they both knew it. In fact, it was eerily like old times, trading barbs and Michonne threatening in jest to do the female public a service and castrate Shane.

"FUCK! Why are you still here!" He growled in abject frustration. He stood away from the bed as if disgusted by what had just transpired and stared at her.

"Disappointed Ngangabouka didn't just do your dirty work for you, huh?" Michonne retorted.

Shane scowled but she knew it was the truth and he did too. They just stared at each other for a long while. This was a crossroads, Michonne knew they could both feel it.

"If you do this, Maggie will never forgive you. Rick will never, ever forgive you." She warned him quietly. "Never."

This, he also knew, was true.

"I told you don't say her name." Shane warned again but it had far less bite than it had had previously.

Finally, he took the gun off her entirely. Angling it upward with the cold barrel resting against the side of his forehead, Shane grew strangely pensive. Michonne exhaled deeply. She wasn't out of the woods by any stretch but the fact that indecision obviously ate at him was a good sign. He stood there looking down at her for another second before putting his gun back in his holster. Michonne sat up then and stared back at him. She'd never been afraid of Shane and even if he meant to kill her now she refused to cower. After a minute, he leaned forward and tapped her leg congenially. She looked at him curiously but didn't move. The days of her taking any kind of silent direction from him were behind them and in that moment his intent was unclear.

He sighed exasperatedly. "Get up."

She wouldn't, especially now he didn't have his gun on her. A second later, he grabbed her arm and bodily hauled her to her feet.

"C'mon, don't make this difficult."

"Why should I make it easy?" Michonne asked resisting him as he pulled her to toward the door.

"Because I'm going to get you out of here, c'mon."


	56. Chapter 56

**_* Author's Note* _**

Hey Everybody! I'm back, as you can see. Sorry, I took so damn long, LOL! Good News! I've kinda played with the format of the next couple of updates to make up for my extended absence. You'll know what's up for both Rick and Michonne. I hope you enjoy that.

Anyway, I wanted to take a brief second to tell you all what had happened...LMAO! Basically, I was so saddened and frankly disillusioned, with the turn the show took that it became really difficult to stay inspired. That was the big overarching issue. The irreparable damage TPTB did to Grimes Family 2.0 made me want to just forget it. (Honestly, I've completely abandoned all plans for follow-up stories. I will finish this one but I'm really that disgusted). Now, on the smaller more immediate scale, it was actually a scene problem. As I've mentioned before, I have a pretty clear idea of what I've wanted this story to be from beginning to end and what beats I want to hit. Of course, I leave room for serendipity and bolts of narrative lightning (but as I said I'm short on those). And unfortunately, while having a general idea of what you want to do and where you want to go is great and helpful, it does little for actually constructing those individual scenes where things happen (or don't happen) when the well runs dry. In fact, as I'm sure my fellow writers know, it can make things more difficult if you have a storyline but then get stuck and have no way get there. I tried all the tricks. I brainstormed with supporters, wrote out of sequence, tried exercises, took a break and wrote other things but ultimately it was a matter of either just motoring through it and presenting y'all with less-than my best stuff or have you guys waiting forever. I, obviously, chose the latter. I still hope you like it though.

To everybody who sent love and encouragement when I was down for the count and for everyone else who just waited patiently as I worked through my shit...Thank you! You're the best. Now sit back and enjoy!

* * *

 _7/28/15 19:32 GMT_

 _Deptford, Aberdeenshire, Scotland_

"Undoubtedly, I'm not as good a shot as you all are, Captain. In point of fact, I haven't had to use a gun in many years. But I should tell you two things: one, you won't be the first man I've killed and two, _at this range, I doubt I'd miss_."

The accent was English but not what Rick had heard Brits call "posh". This wasn't the accent of the stereotypical painfully polite, aristocratic English gentleman. This guy sounded like he meant what he said and would take the top of Rick's skull clean off just as soon as look at him if Rick dared to doubt it. Two other men stood farther back in the room behind Ruth, but only one of them held another gun. Nevertheless, their faces suggested the same no-nonsense attitude.

" _Easy_ ," Rick replied calmly, raising his hands slowly, palms open.

"Well, _shit_ ," Rick heard Carol say from somewhere behind him.

He couldn't even turn his head. The muzzle of the gun pressed into his temple hard enough to leave a mark. Rick was annoyed with himself for having so easily been lulled into such a false sense of security. He should have known better. Still, he knew they wanted something from him. _Why let his group in otherwise?_

"You got me," Rick conceded.

"Then pass that message on to your colleagues. I don't think they got the memo."

Rick didn't move anything but his hand, pointing the left one downward, "Stand down."

"The way I figure it, they shoot you. We shoot her and that other one there, then we just take the rest as it comes." Daryl rebutted ominously.

Rick saw as Ruth's already platter-sized eyes got even wider when she realized she and the man to her immediate left remained in their line of fire, still standing facing Rick in the doorway. From the sound of his voice, Dixon and Peletier had most likely already fallen back behind the door to places with cover but that still provided a vantage point from which to spray the room with bullets.

As this was very obviously, to Rick's mind, a miscommunication he spoke easily, "Lance Corporal, Lieutenant, _stand down._ Make no mistake, that was an order."

Rick knew when they relented by the relieved look on Dr. O'Hare's face.

"Ruth, Cappy, help our guests with their kit," The man by Rick instructed.

"This is one big misunderstanding, I promise you," Rick said as Ruth, and Cappy the horse-faced guy with beady grey eyes and a full head of wavy, salt and pepper hair standing next to her, took everyone's guns. The other, more swarthy man standing farther away still held his gun on them silently.

"I don't think so." Rick's new companion, clearly the one in charge, spoke as he pulled Rick further into the room and put his arm around Rick's neck, gun still firmly at his hairline.

"Weren't you told we were coming? With the doctor and the hard drive? Don't _you_ know the doctor?" Rick looked to Ruth the best he could. The man who held him wasn't quite his height and as a result, Rick was bent backward awkwardly.

"Oh, it was the doctors who told us they were being held against their will at that facility. They said—" The man behind Rick started to explain.

"This muthafucker!" Daryl exclaimed in anger reaching for an oblivious Dr. Mamet by the collar, irrespective of the gun the other man held in his face. The man holding the gun looked truly confused as Dixon knocked the glasses off Mamet's face with an open-palmed slap as if he wasn't standing there next to them.

The man with the gun reflexively tried to intervene in Daryl and Milton's scuffle before the Lance Corporal beat the doctor senseless. He moved to subdue Daryl but instead was grabbed by the wrist suddenly. Dixon twisted the gun out of his hand and swung the man's arm back around behind him, wrenching it up by the wrist painfully. The man moaned. With his free hand, Daryl grabbed the gun from him and put it to his head, holding it there. At the exact same time, Carol used the distraction to pull a hidden blade off her hip and snatch Ruth by the arm, placing the tip at the young woman's throat. It all happened before Cappy, standing nearby, had time to even react.

Startled by the sudden turnabout, their leader automatically moved the gun from Rick's head just long enough for him to make his move. He ducked to the side quickly and pushed the man's gun hand out and away. Almost simultaneously, he elbowed the man viciously in the ribs causing him to double over. Rick turned then, grabbing the hand with the gun in it and punching his assailant in the face with a fist. The man stumbled back a step stunned by the blow. Still holding the man's gun hand twisted painfully at the wrist, Rick stepped past him and kicked him in the back of the leg. The man cried out and crumpled to his knees in front of Rick, releasing his grip on the gun easily, right into Rick's palm.

The leader watched helplessly from a heap on the floor as Rick swiftly disassembled his weapon. Seemingly in one fluid motion, Rick ejected the magazine, putting the clip into his back pocket, then he racked the slide. A chambered bullet flipped automatically out of the ejection port at the top and Rick caught it in midair effortlessly. He then smoothly separated the slide from the grip, discarding them both. Rick barely paid them a passing glance as the pieces skittered noisily across the floor in opposite directions.

"Okay, let's start this again. I'm Rick Grimes, that's LCpl. Daryl Dixon," Daryl nodded toward them without releasing his captive. "Lt. Carol Peletier is there, and you seem to know our doctor already. So, you are?"

Carol tightened her grip on Ruth's upper arm and the blade tip seemed to just barely nick the young woman's throat. She yipped meekly as Cappy stood frozen between them all confounded by their sudden and complete reversal of fortunes.

Ruth's vocalized distress had the desired effect. The bossman on the floor's head drooped as he admitted defeat with his hands up in surrender. If his ebony skin could have flushed red, it might have, he looked so chagrined. He looked back up at Rick pleadingly.

"I'm Dr. Morgan Jones, that there is Dr. Capaldi," Cappy waved limply. "And your man there is holding Dr. Moritz."

"You have to understand Captain Grimes, Dr. Porter and Dr. Lerner indicated in their messages to us that the staff at the Army Lab were trapped there with some armed militia. Dr. Lerner said her group was being held hostage and Dr. Porter was being escorted here under armed guard but the safety of the group was incumbent upon his return with the items we'd agreed to."

Rick knew that much had to be true. Up until the last moment, Porter was the one who was supposed to come with them, but Milton had insisted that he would be the better choice. As the "known quantity" of the two, Rick was more than fine with the swap.

"If you knew all that, then what the hell did you think you were doing?" Daryl said jostling Dr. Mortiz's arm roughly for effect, to which the doctor winced. "Resisting?"

"We could have killed you...easily," Carol added, menacing Ruth further with her large knife to punctuate her words.

" _Relax_ ," Rick admonished them both with a look. "Go on, Doctor."

"We didn't know exactly what we were going to do but we agreed that we had to try and help. We agreed to the information and specimen exchange in part to give the doctors the opportunity to come. We thought there'd be more of you. Dr. Lerner led us to believe there'd be more of you. More doctors..."

"Negan ix-nayed that," Carol admitted. "More insurance we'll have to come back."

"...We even agreed to a code that we would use to ascertain if you were okay when you arrived—"

"But he didn't say the 'safe' words. When I talked about the conference, he was supposed to correct me, say that his keynote was in Chicago, not Minnesota, if it was all clear." Ruth cut in while still trying to keep her distance from Carol's knifepoint.

"He didn't say your words 'cuz it's the wrong doctor," Carol confirmed with irritation.

They all looked down at Milton who was still collapsed in the corner where Daryl's blow had sent him, his head hung forward, unmoving. Rick felt guilty. For once, Milton was just a bystander in all the confusion that had occurred.

Rick nodded to the Lance Corporal and he released Dr. Moritz's arm from behind him finally, going to Milton's side to revive him. Moritz exhaled heavily in relief, rubbing his arm to get the feeling back in it.

Rick shook his head, "You know, Dr. Jones, if you needed some bona fides, I'm certain my boss would be happy to offer you some. _This_ nonsense was unnecessary."

" _We're_ the doctor's group! Half our number are still being held at the USAMRIID site waiting for us to come back and y'all are over here playing at toy soldiers!" Carol hissed, pulling her knife back from Ruth's neck so sharply that it seemed to slice her.

The doctor gasped, putting her fingers to her throat frantically. She was surprised, as they all were when she saw there was no blood at all. Carol wielded the blade so expertly she had not even broken the skin before placing it back in its scabbard on her thigh.

Dr. Jones got to his feet, declining Rick's offered hand. He did, however, take Rick's offered Satellite phone. Dialing the number as Rick instructed, he looked at Rick, "You can understand why we did what we did, can't you?"

Rick shook his head again in disgust, "This was pretty dumb, Doc. And Negan's men would have killed you for it, for sure."

"Hello? This is Dr. Morgan Jones, Chief Medical Officer of WHO Laboratory - Deptford. To whom am I speaking?" Dr. Jones put the phone on speaker then, holding it in front of himself.

"This is Rick Grimes' phone, can I first ask where he is?" The preternaturally calm and soothing voice of Hershel Greene filled the room.

Rick exhaled. _Same ole Hersh._ This is what he'd not heard since they left the Ticonderoga, the totally unflappable voice of reason. A voice that had helped him stay on the straight and narrow half his adult life. The mission briefing and nearly every other aspect of the mission was being entirely run through Secretary of State Monroe's staff and the Navy. So, it was the first time in days that Rick had spoken to his boss.

"Hersh, I'm here. I'm with a very nervous gentleman who needs to know I'm legit." Rick called from his position a few feet away.

"Certainly, this is Deputy Secretary-General Hershel Greene and I can vouch for Rick Grimes and his group, Dr. Jones."

"Tha—" Dr. Jones started before Rick cut him off.

"Hersh, how are the kids? Where are they? Can I speak to them? When I gave my progress report, they wouldn't tell me anything. They just said they were fine." Rick found he couldn't wait any longer for that information.

Hershel hesitated, "They are." He said cryptically.

Rick looked at the eyes in the room, now all settled on him. His chest tightened, "Tell me."

"There was an outbreak on the _Illinois."_

"I thought that couldn't happen," Rick said accusingly like Hershel himself had lied to him.

"They don't know what happened. Or how, exactly, it happened. We think they might have taken pity on some refugees from a flotilla and taken them aboard, that's how it started. In the end, the whole ship was scuttled. Rick, that's over 500 people."

Rick felt sick...and terrified for his children.

"After that, they decided to send the families of non-essentials up to a camp in Nova Scotia."

"NONESSENTIAL? Part of the reason Michonne and I are fucking out here is so that our family would be _guaranteed_ those bunks!"

"Rick, you have to understand you and Michonne were out of contact for two days."

"Two days, not two weeks!" Rick's voice got caught in his throat for a moment. He fought to clear it.

"The Secretary had to assume the worst. Resources are that scarce. B-but Nova Scotia's infection rate has been minimal and Beth's with them, son. You know I would never allow them to send her anywhere I thought she might not be safe. Michonne's friend Daniel went with them. They found his daughter, Ofelia and sent her to meet them up there too. The kids aren't alone, Rick."

 _As far as he was concerned Hershel was rambling now_.

Rick shook his head, struggling to keep his composure in front of a room filled with people. Hershel above all knew that refugee camps left a lot to be desired, "Look, Hersh, I'll call again later, we're in the middle of something."

"Yes, of course, my friend. Until then."

Rick realized he needed to conclude this business as quickly as he could and get back to Rwanda. He was feeling the same urgency as Daryl now. He had to get out of here and go collect his people and get back to his kids. He listened quietly as Dr. Jones and Hershel went through the formalities of verifying each other and then him and his people as he brooded.

"Look, at least they're safe and still alive." Morgan Jones said in consolation to him after the call with Hershel ended.

"Safe?" Rick repeated incredulously. "Hershel told you who I am and what I used to do, right?"

"Yes, but they have the entire US Na—"

"Trust me when I tell you they're not necessarily safe."

"I understand how you feel," Morgan said sympathetically.

"Do you? Do you even _have_ a family?" Rick asked pointedly.

Ruth, Moritz, Carol, and Cappy looked on in stunned silence.

"No..." Morgan shook his head.

"Then you have _no idea_ what you're talking about," Rick spat back harshly. "About how I feel."

"...I lost my family, my- my wife, my son in Edinburgh," Tears crept into Morgan's eyes and voice. "Brother, I lost my son to some _thing_ that used to be my wife. We've all lost someone, Captain Grimes..."

Rick hung his head, ashamed of himself. This was the second time that he'd had to be reminded that he was neither special nor especially unlucky. Just the opposite, in fact.

"...In your case, there's some hope at least."

Rick covered his face with his hand squeezing his temples between his index finger and his thumb to head off a massive shame headache that was coming, "I'm so sorry."

"Nevermind."

"Yo, he's not waking up." Daryl cut in from his position kneeling in front of Dr. Mamet's unconscious body.

Cappy went to join him, checking Milton's vitals.

"He's not dead," Cappy pronounced and every person in room exhaled. He pulled a small light out of his lab coat and peered into Mamet's eyes, testing his pupils.

Cappy turned and looked up at the group confounded. "But he may be slipping into a coma."

"What happened to him?" Ruth asked frowning, with one hand still at her throat, but already beginning to kneel to assist her colleague.

"He was bitten," Rick answered simply.

Cappy fell back from Milton's body reflexively, startled and possibly repulsed. Ruth recoiled as well.

"But, he was talking." She responded confused.

"Yeah, same as Dr. Maitland. You've been sharin' notes. You know 'bout her right?" Daryl asked.

"Where is she by the way?" Cappy asked. "Weren't you supposed to be bringing her?"

"Long story," Carol explained.

Dr. Jones nodded, "You gave him the intervention? _This_ is 247?"

"Well, no," Rick admitted then.

"But he was bitten by Maitland herself." Carol volunteered with surprising hopefulness.

" _My God!_ " It was the first and only thing that Dr. Moritz had said since they'd met him. All the doctors in the room exchanged glances.

"It's nothing yet," Dr. Jones doused cold water on the mood. "C'mon, get him up. Let's get him into the lab."

* * *

7/29/15 02:53 CAT

Medical Station Omicron, Rwanda

Michonne stood at the window looking into Dr. Maitland's now vacant cell contemplating what must have been going through Rick's mind when he agreed to such a completely insane plan. She realized now how little of it he'd told her. In the quiet hours before he left, he had confessed to desperation and despair and his absolute conviction that he was between a rock and a hard place. And it was that knowledge that had stopped her from being irate or feeling totally betrayed that he'd chosen to gloss over the more ludicrous and dangerous elements of the mission he'd been sent on. But now, nearly eighteen hours later not knowing much, save that they were still alive, worked on her. Made her feel uncertain, restless, unsteady...and that's not where she wanted to be. Michonne didn't like that feeling. It was what made sleep impossible for her currently. It was also almost certainly the reason she was standing with Private Rhee in the middle of the lab in the middle of the night waiting on an audience with Dr. Lerner.

Though Michonne had only met the woman the day before, she already knew everything about Dawn Lerner rubbed her wrong. She couldn't exactly pinpoint anything particular but she could already feel the muscles in her shoulder blades tightening in preparation for their next encounter. She watched the woman clear the laboratory's decontamination protocols in the reflection cast by the window in front of her. With her arms crossed over her chest, Michonne alternately gazed into the empty chamber and at the doctor's reflection behind her. She wondered how much of this stupid plan was Lerner's doing. As the surviving senior staff member, its implementation would have had to rely heavily on Lerner's say-so.

Glenn seemed to read the mood standing quietly looking over everything as if he'd never been in the lab before. A moment later it occurred to Michonne that perhaps it was because he hadn't. It was really only her second visit after she and Sasha had stumbled upon it yesterday in their casual reconnoiter of the facility. Michonne was still surprised given the stern talking to that she'd been given by Lerner, that they had let them do that. Allowed them to just wander into a working laboratory facility at their leisure. Only after she'd tried to go to bed last night did it occur to her that it must have been Ngangabouka himself who'd okayed it.

It had to be him that briefly allowed them access to a key card and let them spend half a day roaming unaccompanied. But now, walking with an entourage that consisted of Rhee and a sullen, disengaged soldier named Honore, she realized yesterday had been an anomaly— an opportunity she might never have again. The way she understood it, everyone went everywhere trailed by Ngangabouka's people. Only the three doctors enjoyed a slightly greater degree of freedom. Yet, yesterday for some reason, Ngangabouka had allowed Michonne six-unfettered-hours of exploration. It could only be that he, in his sadistic fashion, had given her just enough freedom to discover the boundaries of her cage and then no more.

 _Why?_ Anything near an answer that she considered plausible seemed wrong.

"Ms. Philippe," Dr. Lerner announced as she finally cleared the last ante-chamber from the clean room. The loud hissing of released air preceded her entry by a moment allowing Michonne time to turn around and put on her game face. "Any further word on your husband and his team?"

"M-my husband?" Michonne said set back on her heels by the question, the presumption of it. "Captain Grimes isn't my husband."

She saw Glenn hanging on her words in her peripheral vision. Michonne frowned fiercely, more irritated with the question than she had any reason to be. Simultaneously though, the thought of it created a strong but not entirely unpleasant throb in her chest. For her part, Lerner seemed appropriately embarrassed by her mistake.

"Forgive me, last night, given what Ariane said, I thought…" Lerner sputtered unnerved by her own error in her highly-strung, nervous manner. "With your relationship and then your ring and…" The doctor trailed off inelegantly her large blue eyes searching around for a place other than Michonne's face to land before settling on Michonne's necklace with Mike's ring still dangling like a pendant from it.

After a moment, Michonne shook her head and waved her hand as if to clear the air between them before Dr. Lerner could speak again. "You know what? It really doesn't matter. That's not the point," She attempted to regain the footing she suddenly felt like she'd lost.

"So you haven't?" The doctor asked.

"How would I? The messages come through your office..."

Lerner looked at her calmly and shoved her hands into the pockets of the lab coat she wore over her scrubs as if quietly pleased. Lerner suddenly seemed withholding, like a vault closing and somehow Michonne now felt like she was the one on the offensive trying to pry it back open.

"I haven't heard any more from the Captain," Michonne repeated calmly with uncharacteristic irritability. She hoped she didn't sound as anxious for some news, _any_ news as she felt. "H-have you not heard more from the facility?"

Dr. Lerner nodded excitedly. "Oh yes, they've been sending us data packets all evening. It's been exactly what we were hoping for, in terms of information exchange. We're very grateful to the Captain for undertaking this endeavor."

Michonne cleared her throat. Her point was flying well over the doctor's head, apparently. _This was gonna be even more difficult than she thought._ "But...they didn't tell you anything else? Nothing more about Captain Grimes and his team?"

Michonne involuntarily reached up to fondle her ring. It was a nervous habit. They'd just given it back to her after her surgery and she'd immediately put it back on, unthinking of how it would feel for Rick to see it still hanging there. Even given how close she and Mike had gotten to the altar, Rick seemed —in just these few days— much closer to an actual husband than Mike had ever been. Still, she kept the ring. She really didn't understand her continued attachment to it, feeling uncomfortable suddenly. She let the ring drop back to its spot nestled just above her cleavage.

Dawn continued to look at her blankly.

"It's one thing to say they've arrived, it's another to say they've arrived, you know...intact." Michonne's hand strayed toward the necklace again before hesitating. "I-I just wanted to know that they're okay."

Dawn Lerner's eyes widened then as if she was finally comprehending what Michonne was asking. Her head fell to one side as she seemed to look around Michonne's face appraisingly. Just then, she removed one hand from her coat pocket and reached out to grasp Michonne's. She squeezed it firmly with supposed understanding as she squinted and nodded in some strange approximation of a correctly sympathetic facial expression.

"Oh, of course. _Of course_. Captain Grimes got there safely and successfully delivered the drive to Dr. Jones. He and his group were very brave. I have no doubt," Dawn pulled her other hand out of her pocket and checked her watch. "...that they're getting some well-deserved sleep. I'd advise you to do the same. You're still mending, don't forget. And rest assured, we're on the verge of something great here. I'm certain of it!" She shook Michonne's hand before dropping it mechanically.

"If you'll excuse me now, I need to get back inside. The data they're sending us is very exciting, informative stuff. Gotta get back to it! More tomorrow! 'Night, Ms. Philippe, Sgt. Lee."

Michonne looked at Glenn briefly, who stood there baffled by how Dawn had managed to disregard not only Michonne's concerns but both his name and rank so offhandedly. They both watched as she walked away going back into the decontamination chamber without a backward glance.

"So, that was a yes, right?" Glenn verified.

"It seemed like it was supposed to be," Michonne shrugged as bewildered as he was while watching Lerner depart through the pressurized door.

"I'd say that was more of an equivocation for the benefit of the present interested parties who might have viewed a truthier answer unfavorably. A few mirrors and a little Rick-scented smoke blown up an otherwise potentially chapped ass."

Michonne and Glenn turned to see Dr. Porter standing in the doorway clutching an industrial-sized bag of potato chips to his chest. He watched them placidly offering nothing more. Michonne needed to be cautious with the guard Honore still standing in the hallway. Though he looked disinterested and sleepy enough that the whole thing held little interest for him.

"You have something you could add, Dr. Porter?" Michonne asked patiently.

"What do you even _do_ here?" Glenn said looking around. "You aren't ever working."

"I'm a cytogeneticist," Eugene retorted before putting a handful of chips in his mouth.

" _Whatever_ _that means_ ," Glenn just barely whispered.

" _Private Rhee_ ," Michonne admonished under her breath. "You were gonna tell us what you know, Doctor?"

"It seems like GI JOE over there isn't desirous of any of the pertinent deets I was heretofore inclined to proffer." Eugene shrugged and then pouted into his chips.

"Eugene," Glenn started before Michonne jabbed him in the ribs. "D-Dr. Porter, I, I didn't mean it like that. I, uh, just don't understand what it is you do here."

"Doubt it's worth trying to explain to a troglodyte and an alleged Coccydynia," He sighed. "But suffice to say, I'm not supposed to be here any more than you bunch are. I was just here to do some controlled propagation work when this turd-sandwich hit the turbine and splattered. I'm here to create the correct lab specimens since they don't have a Mickey Ds around here- 'D' in this case being a mus musculus distributor."

They both briefly looked at each other puzzled, then back at him.

"Do you mean, you're a mouse breeder?" Michonne simplified after she mentally sorted through all the words Eugene had just used. "Are you a vet too?"

"Not in so many words," Porter spoke between mouthfuls of chips. "But I still provide a highly sought-after and essential service to the medical/veterinary industry. There is a high genetic specificity required in the strains of our mightiest mouse. Can't go out and catch just any little Jerry that's wandering around out there. No sir. Can't mail order 'em or pick 'em up at the nearest pet-store either...secret lab in the middle of nowhere and all. So I am present and accounted for biannually to ensure that genetically all our little Fievel-stock are of the correct predisposition to aid in the research. I provide them the perfect Pinky for their Brains."

"So, you aren't a permanent member of staff?" Glenn clarified.

"Affirmative...but now I find my departure preempted and impeded by the _Dawn of the Dead._ "

It wasn't terribly helpful information but it was interesting to know. Dr. Porter didn't have any particular allegiance to this staff.

"And you were saying, Doctor?" Michonne asked eager to get the conversation back on track.

"About the Living Dead?"

"No," Michonne sighed. "About what's happened with Captain Grimes' team."

"Oh, yeah. They took casualties." He answered matter-of-factly.

Michonne nearly gasped, her eyes darting to the door Dawn left through. She would take that woman's whole head off her shoulders if anything happened to Rick. Glenn grabbed her upper arm then as if that fact was written on her face.. _.and maybe it was_.

"Who?" Glenn asked Porter urgently, holding her tight.

"Dr. Maitland," Eugene answered easily. "...and your compatriot Rovia."

Glenn dropped her arm in shock and Michonne sat down heavily in the nearest seat. She hadn't known Jesus well, the truth was she didn't know any of them all that well. And in point of fact, she'd spent the majority of their acquaintance unconscious for one reason or another but she knew without a doubt that they would never have made it out of Turkey alive if not for his assistance. For that reason, the news pained her. One way or another, Jesus had been risking his life for her and he'd died for it. Tears welled in her eyes that she brushed away before they fell.

"Why lie?" Michonne wondered aloud.

"Maybe she didn't want you to panic." Glenn offered diplomatically.

"Or maybe she just doesn't want you all trying to escape." Eugene countered bluntly with his mouth full.

"What?"

"Excuse me?"

They spoke at the same time, both looking at Porter dumbfounded. He seemed oblivious to their alarmed looks, standing between them both, digging deeply into the bag and crunching his chips loudly.

"Let me first state that unfairly and with a malice of forethought did your colleague Dr. Mamet steal my ticket to ride on outta here and therefore the cost for you to have your very own Tweety is gonna be a seat on the next thing smokin'."

Glenn looked at Michonne for an answer. Porter hadn't even said anything yet and Michonne already found that her head hurt. She took a deep breath to brace herself before speaking.

"Okay Dr. Porter, agreed. Now, sing."


	57. Chapter 57

May 10th 2011

Headquarters of _Patrouille Patriotique Populaire du Congo_ , Nord Kivu, DRC

As Rick stood silently in the small alcove of what used to be a municipal building, he looked up and around.

It had once been the grand post office of the region by the look of it. Covered in glossy polished wood and hard stone, engraved with the exploits of the Grecian god, Mercury the messenger, it was now being misused as the headquarters of the war-ravaged provincial authorities. More specifically, it was the home base of the regional militia group. Multiple layers of dust that covered everything, and more recent careless pockmarks in the woodwork, revealed that the warring factions hadn't appreciated its former beauty. _Or maybe they just didn't have the time to notice..._

 _Damn shame_ , Rick thought, as he did about most things in the country. It was yet another example of valuable infrastructure fallen into obsolescence by disuse or disregard.

Minutes earlier, he had watched as Carter went into an office a few yards away from him to speak with his contact, a general in the Congolese People's Patriotic Patrol. Now, as he waited for the result, Rick had to stop from rolling his eyes at this whole endeavor. But as a random soldier walked by wearing a baseball helmet and face guard, he smirked slightly to himself remembering what the American soldiers liked to call the group.

Country-wide, the Patrouille Patriotique Populaire du Congo or "C-Triple-P" had a popular but disparaging and not-so-secret nickname that Rick personally despised hearing. Taken at face-value, the group's unique moniker and the peculiar idiosyncrasies of their leader were a joke. The well-known reputation of the group lent itself to parody- a situation where the group was both simultaneously well-respected by the government while being laughing-stocks amongst the country's military-class. Made up originally of farmers, fishermen, businessmen and other local civilians dressed and armed with whatever they could find, including machetes, pitchforks, pots and pans, they were never taken seriously. However, in the wake of Negan's takeover of the region, they had grown to become the government's most potent force in the area. The _CTripleP_ gained war experience from their defense of the border during the genocide in neighboring Rwanda over a decade ago and then felt called back into service by Negan's subsequent ascendancy.

Still, despite their inauspicious beginnings, they'd gained real military training from allies and real weapons with support from the government and welcomed real career soldiers into their ranks. As a result, in the intervening years, they had actually become a truly formidable army but because they were still a quirky group prone to eccentric dressing with both an unorthodox start and an odd leader, they had never managed to shake their oddball stigma as a group. So, as much as he'd tried to discourage it, even Rick's people at the UN had picked up the bad habit of calling them by the same pejoratives their American counterparts used...

" _Trippies_? Is this really the best we can do? Are we sure about this?" Maggie sidled up to Rick then, resting her head against his shoulder and pulling him from his very similar thoughts.

They watched as a soldier with a metal pot on his head and a baseball catcher's chest protector walked by.

"They're good fighters," Was all Rick could convincingly muster in response.

Despite their reputation, _Rick didn't like it._ It wouldn't be his choice but they had limited options since they were an unsanctioned operation. There was no way for him to ask for any _official_ help —Stavros had been clear about that— especially considering that to official onlookers things would appear exactly as Embry had described them a day before: like a pricey, poorly-justified, and entirely unnecessary 'snipe hunt'. Given that, they were without other options. As far as anyone in charge was concerned, Michonne was either temporarily unaccounted for or at the worst, absent without leave. And in either case, her disappearance was completely unrelated to Negan's operation. So it was either call in personal favors for aid or try handling this whole operation as five civilians… in other words commit, professional and quite possibly even literal, suicide.

Rick looked at Maggie and shrugged with his arms crossed over his chest. He knew he was being passive aggressive but the very fact that it was still _five_ of them there irritated him beyond reason. He couldn't do anything about Carter and Barnes as they were actually crucial to his efforts but Maggie and Samir were _not_ welcome. _He'd been_ adamant about it. He was perfectly willing to risk himself but he wanted Samir and far more importantly, Maggie nowhere around. He, increasingly, had less and less faith that Shane would be able to be reasoned with, which he knew was why she wanted to be there. Unfortunately for him, however, both young people were quick to tell him that they were totally unconcerned with what _he_ wanted.

...He'd tried strong-arming Maggie, threatening to call her father. But somehow it had only succeeded in making her that much more intractable. Now, she hung at his hip in case he should get the idea to leave her behind somewhere. Maggie was resolute about coming with them and he'd been completely ineffectual in convincing her otherwise. Samir too was unwilling to be convinced to return to Kisangani. North Kivu was where Rick's predecessor had lost his life to Negan's men, as a result, Samir was absolutely adamant about sticking with his boss.

Rick didn't like it but he couldn't do anything about either of them. So he could only resolve to keep them safe. They were both adults and this wasn't an official mission where his word would or could be law. Yet a horrible foreboding nagged at him, one he had difficulty shaking. Rick didn't know what he was expecting to find or do, but he was no longer convinced any of them, not him, not Maggie could help Shane now. As the hours crept by without a word from him, Rick felt more and more doubtful. At the very least, he knew Shane wouldn't be alone wherever he was and in that circumstance, even if Shane could be reasoned with… who was to say that the people he was with would see reason at all. He wanted more than anything to spare Maggie that.

"Here we go," She said cutting into Rick's thoughts, whispering under her breath as Carter came out of the office with another man.

In the distance, Carter smiled and shook his friend, General Ezekiel's, hand and clapped him on the back simultaneously. Earlier, Rick could hear the sound of Ezekiel's laughter, as he spoke with Embry, from yards away. The booming sound continued to resound now bouncing off the hard quartz stone walls in the excellent acoustics of the building. He was clearly a jovial man despite his career choice, with a smooth brown face, long salt and pepper locs and surprisingly kind, dark eyes. He wore colorful feathers in his hair and a cape draped over his shoulders that looked like it was made of a tiger-skin..from a rug at IKEA. On his best day, Ezekiel Kabeya was not someone who would have been taken for a well-known and fearsome militia leader, though he was. He was more like a day-player on a local soap opera. And to further the point, he was known for being almost cartoonishly larger than life.

Carter left him briefly, as he stopped to speak with one of his lieutenants, and came toward them. Samir and Barnes, who had stood apart in their own huddle came forward too so that they could all convene.

"What's the good word, Colonel?" Maggie asked first, sounding to Rick's ears exactly like her father at that moment.

"I don't know how good it is," Carter answered rubbing the back of his neck and looking fatigued to his bones. "But the general has agreed to loan us some of his force."

"How many?" Rick asked cutting to the chase.

Carter smiled wryly at Rick's abruptness. "Twenty men."

"Twenty men," Rick repeated sighing heavily.

It was more men than he had any right to hope for but it still didn't seem adequate, knowing that they had no idea what they were headed into. As far as they knew, Negan commanded an army of hundreds. They were headed into his inner sanctum with hardly enough to meet a heavily armed group of equal size head on. Unfortunately, the disapproval on Rick's face apparently said all he wasn't.

"Look, Captain, this is what I could muster on three hours notice. I invite you to try and do better! I can't convince him to commit his whole force to a place we aren't even positive yet exists, to engage an army of undetermined size to rescue _one_ woman." Carter retorted angrily.

Rick began to speak but Carter cut him off.

"—Not to say that if I could have convinced him to give us more men, I wouldn't have," He said preempting whatever it was he thought Rick was going to say. "I want to get her back as much as you do."

"I know that, Carter," Rick said evenly. He tried to ignore how much it rankled him that Carter was being absolutely sincere. Plus, Rick didn't mean to appear ungrateful, despite appearances to the contrary.

Unlike before, as much as it chafed him, Rick now recognized it was true. In the hours since they'd debriefed Nyokato and her niece and left the refugee camp in Uganda, Rick had watched Carter work tirelessly. During those three hours, he had made and fielded numerous calls and marshaled any and all the resources he had at his disposal to their efforts. From transport to improved weaponry to personnel, it had been all Carter, all his connections and his access that got them where they were: standing in North Kivu with an audience with the Congolese general who had done the most to keep Negan's forces at bay in the region.

And that was saying something. General Ezekiel was as infamous as Negan while also being well-respected for his efforts to restore order and the rule of law to the Eastern border of the country. Though Rick had never met him personally before, in Rick's line of work, in this country, his name was on everyone's lips every bit as much as Negan's was. More than even the DRC government itself, Ezekiel and his "Trippies" had kept Negan and his "Saviors" from taking over in the East. Rick and Michonne had been at countless fundraising dinners where his efforts were honored and his people's praises sung. Adulation of that sort always made Rick nervous— after all, in some corners, people still felt that Negan was a hero too— but thus far, no one could argue with Ezekiel's results. And it seemed, other than being an eccentric, with Ezekiel, what you saw appeared to be what you got.

"So, Zeke is going to give us twenty of his best guys and then at nightfall, we're going to head up into the mountains under cover of darkness," Carter announced.

"Why are we waiting? Why can't we go right now?" Maggie asked turning to Rick urgently. She was as eager to get there as he was, champing at the bit to get to Shane before he did the unthinkable.

Rick unfurled his arms finally and put one around Maggie, squeezing to shore her up. He hoped they could mutually keep each other calm because the next few hours before dusk were going to be excruciating for him as well. "We don't want anyone warning them we're coming. Heading up there in broad daylight, no matter how small our group would be, would most likely send up an instant alarm. We can't be sure it'll be much better tonight but we're hoping at least they won't know we're coming until we're almost there."

Maggie nodded with understanding even as Rick watched her forehead crease with worry lines.

"AH, YES! Our intrepid warriors! Colonel Embry's noble band," General Ezekiel clapped his hands together once, loudly, as he approached. The sound bounced around the cavernous space.

Rick stifled an amused smirk as Samir looked around to find the person Ezekiel was bellowing so boisterously at.

"I hear it is a hero's quest you embark upon this good day?" The General proclaimed loudly, arriving at Carter's side.

Maggie turned slightly to look at Rick and then to Carter. He knew what her expression said without her speaking. It was one thing to hear about Ezekiel but something else entirely to hear it for yourself. _Was this dude for real?_ The question was written all over both Rick and Maggie's faces as Carter looked at his friend innocently. Samir gave a similar look to Barnes. Rick knew the guy was an oddball but that had been by reputation only. Actually hearing the eccentricities of his speech pattern was something else completely.

"You mean to rescue a lady love from the clutches of the madman Ngangabouka?" General Ezekiel said as if the very idea of it delighted him.

Rick was taken off guard by the question as Ezekiel looked at them all. He stammered causing everyone's attention to turn suddenly to him. Rick's chest constricted as he searched for the right words, but they all had suddenly abandoned him. "I-I, don't love her. I mean, she's my friend, so of course I, ah, lov— That is, I'm, uh, I'm married so..."

Rick sputtered clumsily until he was able to finally pull it together coherently. "Um, my wife is in America."

Everyone stared at him wide-eyed as Ezekiel looked on at the whole scene the most puzzled.

"We're trying to find a colleague that Negan might have kidnapped." Maggie finished for him. "Thank you for your assistance with that."

"Yes, yes, my friends," Ezekiel laughed boisterously. "But I refer to my good man, Carter of course, to _his_ lady lo—"

"Zeke! Zeke," Carter cut him off suddenly then laying a heavy hand on the general's shoulder to steer him away from his current line of questioning and toward everything else, effectively silencing him. "Let me introduce you to the team. This is my great friend, Captain Rick Grimes of the UN Mission at Kisangani, and his esteemed colleagues, Lieutenant Padukone and Maggie Greene; and of course, you already know Justin."

As the Colonel made the introductions and hands were shaken, Rick stared daggers at Carter. _What in the actual fuck was that?_ Truthfully, he wanted to ask himself the same question. He couldn't remember the last time he'd come apart verbally like that...probably some time in grade school at the blackboard in front of his favorite teacher or in those early delirious days when he couldn't get it together to just ask Lori out on a first date. He frowned to himself and Embry was wise enough to avoid eye contact.

"Greetings all!" Ezekiel intoned in his deep, but surprisingly jovial, bass voice. "My sincerest apologies that I cannot accompany you on this journey, but please accept a company of some of my most valiant and skilled men, in my humble stead."

"Yeah, uh, let's me and Justin bend your ear over here for just a minute about those logistics with AfriCOM." Carter said abruptly then keeping his hand on Ezekiel's shoulder to hurriedly guide him away as Justin followed behind.

Once they were well away, Maggie chuckled. A moment later, Samir did as well and slowly, surprisingly, their laughter grew. Rick looked at them both as if they'd lost their collective minds.

"What's so funny?"

Samir broke into a genuine laugh, "You!"

Rick could see at that moment as Samir and Maggie's amusement devolved into guffaws that forced them to hold themselves up by leaning into each other, just precisely how young they both were…

"Oh, I, um, I, ah, I'm married!" Maggie mocked him as his face suddenly burned with embarrassment.

Actual tears fell from the corners of Samir's eyes as he laughed at Rick's expense.

Rick smiled wryly even though he could hardly find a thing funny about that awkward exchange. He'd honestly thought Ezekiel was talking to him when he called Michonne his lady love.

 _Which was silly because_ …

"What? I _am_ married." He retorted but even to his ears, it sounded feeble.

Maggie nodded understandingly, still wiping her eyes. "That you are."

" _Methinks thou doth protest too much_ ," Samir added unhelpfully imitating Ezekiel.

Rick scowled, then relented. There was no point further denying he'd revealed something of himself in that misunderstanding but what that was he was still struggling to come to grips with himself.

"Ah well," Maggie settled and sighed beatifically. "Look Samir, you know what they say, ' _the course of true love never did run smooth_ …'"

The two instigators cackled again as Rick sighed trying to be a good sport. Normally, he would have laughed too. He wasn't nearly as dry as most imagined and he could certainly use a laugh at the moment, even if it was just at himself. He'd never have survived his friendship with Shane if he couldn't take a joke at his own expense. And that was the _exact_ sort of thing Shane would have ridden him mercilessly about for weeks. But something about it just seemed to cut too close for him to see it as good fun.

Still, he tried to be diplomatic. The truth was he _did_ care deeply for Michonne and there was no shame in revealing that. _Was there?_ He stopped his thoughts in their tracks, speaking to remind not only them but himself.

"Now's not the time for this. We have a lot of prep to do," He admonished them to little effect.

"Verily, we are alike in mind, good sir," Samir blurted out, putting on a fairly convincing faux-British accent as Maggie nodded at him. But they both still had difficulty fixing their faces to approximate a sober expression.

Rick sighed and rolled his eyes, throwing his hands on his hips, "Just tell me, are we going to be quoting Shakespeare all afternoon now? Because I'll remind you, I'm armed." He added as they dissolved into yet another fit of giggles.

"Mayhaps," Maggie said smirking at him.

 _Like two children._ He shook his head then and sighed again in exasperation as that seemed to send them into further more peals of laughter at his expense.

Given the situation, even though he was the butt of the joke, Rick recognized it was better that Maggie was laughing at something now than crying over Shane. That was something she'd already spent a long time, judging by the redness rimming her eyes, doing. —Especially if his premonitions proved correct and she wasn't yet done crying. He recognized in that moment that he should just let her have this. This brief moment of reprieve and levity, a short calm before the onslaught. As Rick went off to find somewhere to go brood and clean his gun in peace and quiet, he recognized these were the last few hours before all their lives changed irrevocably...one way or another.

* * *

May 11th, 2011

 _Location Unknown, DRC_

"Oh My God! What did you do to him?" Michonne whispered.

In the silence of well-after midnight, the whole building was eerily quiet. She knelt over Fabian's unconscious body, spread across the floor in the hall in front of her door.

"Aw, he'll be fine. I just put him in a headlock and he was out like a light, that's all." Shane scoffed.

"That's all? You could have killed him! There's a reason why that's illegal, Frack!" Michonne scolded Shane, checking the boy's pulse.

It was slow but steady. Shane was right. He was fine but Michonne was still livid. Not only with Shane but Ngangabouka and Oné for putting Fabian in this position. And even a little with herself for being someone that Shane would do this to get at.

"Help me get him up."

"Uh-uh," Shane retorted like a teenager to a parent.

Michonne skewered him with a look like her grandma used to give and he sucked his teeth.

"You don't help me get him inside and on that bed and the first person who glances this way will know something is up."

It was hard to fight that logic. Shane rolled his eyes and then grabbed Fabian's feet as Michonne hauled him with her hands under his arms. He wasn't as light as he looked and it took minutes of grunting labor to get him over to the bed. Particularly because, Michonne realized, she was the one bearing the majority of his weight.

Michonne propped his head up on the pillow and looked down at him.

"Quit mooning at the kid. No one here cares about you, Michonne," Shane cut into her thoughts to declare, unwittingly reminding her of François' sobering warning.

She looked up at Shane, wounded. "That's still no reason to act like an asshole."

"This little motherfucker could have guided you out of here at any point he chose to, and _I'm_ the asshole?"

"Yeah, Jackass. 'Cuz you're the reason I'm here in the first place. Or did you already forget that in your, what, _two seconds_ of gallantry?" Michonne sniped, getting up from the edge of the bed.

"Just keep your voice down and c'mon," Shane replied walking toward the door with Michonne trailing behind. "Stay behind me until we're out of the building."

Michonne nodded obediently.

This late, the building was silent. Michonne had always been unclear what the true function of the "Big House" was to Ngangabouka's group. While he was in residence, it had been a hub of activity, Michonne could hear it behind her door. But in his absence, it had grown quiet, she couldn't be certain at any point of how many people were in the building. She wasn't sure even that anyone besides François, Fabian and herself were. And at that moment, as she moved cautiously behind Shane down the darkened corridors, the place seemed totally deserted. But as they tried for an exit, they encountered a small group hanging by the door. Shane pushed her back and they headed another way only to confronted by the same thing.

"Shit," Shane uttered under his breath. "Okay, this way."

He hurried her down a narrow corridor. Just as they rounded the corner at the back of the building, Shane opened a door and pushed Michonne roughly in, pulling it shut behind her. Before she could utter a word of protest, she heard why. It appeared that one lonely guard was finally making his rounds. From the sound of it, he was none too pleased to have run into Shane either.

 _It would figure it was right before they reached the exit too,_ Michonne groused to herself.

Michonne didn't move for a moment, looking around. The small room, no bigger than a broom closet, had two high windows that she couldn't reach but which prevented it from being pitch black inside. She could hear the agitated murmuring outside that indicated that the guard was unhappy to find Shane there "lurking around". She put a hand out hesitantly in front of her to orient herself and inadvertently bumped something. It clattered to the floor noisily as she put that hand to her mouth frightened. The disagreement outside clearly came to a head evidenced by a loud crash against the door a moment later. Michonne jumped back swiftly to make room as it swung open and a body tumbled to the floor at her feet.

She covered her mouth again quickly to muffle the startled cry that came from her automatically. She looked up into Shane's face, his eyes were narrow and murderous, his breathing labored. It took only the look on his face to tell her that the child, because it was a teenager, she could see that even in the dim light, at her feet was dead.

"Don't gimme that look. You want out, right?" He grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the room roughly. She yelped as she was forced to hop over the still warm body.

He coldly kicked the boy's feet into the room and closed the door behind him as Michonne looked on horrified. She'd never seen Shane kill anyone and in truth even after everything that had happened, a part of her _still_ hadn't thought he was capable of it, until now. She shivered with the thought that only a half hour earlier she'd dared him to kill her —calling his bluff. This confirmed for her that despite his recent change of heart, she needed to get away from him as soon as possible. Michonne was certain of that now.

"Everybody wants to eat pork but ain't nobody wanna know how the sausage gets made," He grumbled, pulling her toward the refuse room he'd previously identified as their way out.

The stench was vile and as thick as fog when Shane pulled the door open. He pushed Michonne through the heaps of raw garbage that lay in overlapping mounds around the room. She didn't know if they were composting or just allowing it all to rot in there but her stomach revolted at the smell making her gag.

"There's gotta be another way out."

"You know that do you?" Shane asked, pushing her further across the slippery floor. "You know that even when we saw the _mancala_ game they've got running at the kitchen door? And the two guys sitting at the front entrance too?"

Michonne fell quiet until they reached a small chute no bigger than a doggie-door. "Oh no."

"Oh yes," Shane pushed her forward toward the door as she simultaneously pulled away. "Through there and I'll meet you on the other side."

"Meet me?" She looked at him incredulously in the low light, "What about you?"

"I've got to go be seen leaving the same way I came in...alone," He explained impatiently, pressing her toward the chute. "I'll be there in a minute."

She watched Shane turn off and walk away seemingly unconcerned.

Michonne considered it. If she hurried, this could be her one chance to make a break for it alone, away from Shane. Or she could try to find a different exit. Possibly, she could find a room and try to jump out a window, but if she encountered someone on her way back, she would be finished. There was going to be no way that she could take a life as Shane had done. And Shane wasn't wrong, the other exits were being watched. So, this was truly her best bet, she reasoned. But in her hesitation, she was losing time.

"Okay," She said to herself into the darkness, talking herself into doing the deed. _She'd worry about the logistics of ditching Shane later, once she was out of this infernal building_.

Michonne made for the chute finally, retching at the smell and thick layer of rancid slime that coated it. Holding her breath, she slid through it easily, unsurprisingly. Lubricated by what could only have been years of organic sludge and biological waste, she emerged on the other side like a newborn, coated from head to toe in a foul, brown caul. As she crawled awkwardly out of the trough the opening seemingly fed, she vowed to kill Shane and then get Clara to give her two tetanus boosters and a T.B. test when she got back to the Mission.

 _The Mission_. _Would they all survive the fallout from all of this? Just the suggestion of impropriety had nearly brought the whole organization to the brink. How would they all fare after this was over?_

Though she was nowhere near out of the woods, Michonne suddenly gave thought to Maggie and Rick. This would destroy them struggled to her feet trying not to think yet again of the mess Shane had made of everything. _He was helping her now,_ she tried to focus on that despite misgivings that nagged at her. She focused her attention on the ground, soft and wet beneath her feet. Mud oozed through her toes, reminding her she'd made a tactically unsound move in leaving her room with no shoes on. Not that she'd chosen to do that. Now, she flopped around unsteadily in the muck like a newborn foal. When she finally looked around she saw why.

Looking at her with weirdly similar blank expressions was a sow, her piglets, and Shane. She was standing in a pigpen, calf-deep in pig slop. Shane stood, completely nonplussed, at the wooden fence that delineated the edge of the pen she was standing in. He watched her dispassionately with one foot up on the first rung on the fence as if this sort of thing happened to him daily.

"You did this shit deliberately." She declared indignantly as she began shuffling through the muck toward the fence. The shade of amusement in his eyes as his eyebrows went up in feigned innocence answered her without words.

"Keep your voice down."

The moon that hung overhead and a small flashlight were the only sources of illumination afforded them. But sporadic lights in the cluster of buildings reminded Michonne that though they seemed to be alone, the night was full of eyes. If she hoped to escape she would need to heed Shane's warning, despite the fact that she wanted to berate him loudly while smacking him about the face and head. She pursed her lips deliberately to stop anything else from escaping.

Michonne dragged herself up and over the small fence— without any assistance from Shane— trying to preserve what little dignity she had left. She whispered to him. "How are we gonna get out of here?"

"You are going out there," He leaned into her briefly then back quickly, repelled by her new foul odor. His arm pointed through the thicket of trees toward where the back pasture was. "I'll show you the way. Up the hill and through the trees, there's a horse paddock. The gate there is old, rusty and most importantly, unattended. Other than the field hands that work there sometimes, it's pretty deserted most of the time. We're about 40 kilometers from the nearest town. You move fast and you could be there by dawn," Shane looked at his watch and then pointed out the way in gentlemanly fashion, letting her take the lead.

Michonne didn't acknowledge how uneasy it made her that he was so familiar with the camp, just following his instruction instead. Still, the fine hairs on the back of her neck began to rise. Where they were headed was no doubt dark and secluded. They moved stealthily, hugging the shadows cast by the buildings stopping only when they heard voices until they cleared the cluster of structures completely. The grounds surrounding the buildings were extensive and relatively flat but as they approached the treeline the gradient of the terrain changed abruptly. She stumbled more than once over the large, thick roots of the intertwined copse of trees.

In order to keep the camp indistinguishable from its surroundings and thereby undetectable to outsiders, they didn't do much tending to the property. The foliage was overgrown throughout the camp but particularly here, it was inky dark and wildly lush. As they walked, it only then occurred to Michonne that the camp might not have been purely a prison. It had probably been, at some point in its existence, a self-sustaining hard labor camp by the look of the layout: big house and surrounding buildings, detainment center, farmland and pasture… it was yet another remnant of the country's colonial past.

She contemplated it further as they walked in silence, with her growing increasingly aware of Shane's slowing pace falling behind her. It caused a slow but steady dread to fill her. Despite her effort to take his philosophical 180 at face value, her sense of foreboding grew as she followed him farther into the trees.


	58. Chapter 58

*** Author's Note***

Hey Everyone! Thanks for coming back so enthusiastically. I really appreciate the reviews and encouragement! As you will soon see, this Monday's update is hella long. As a result, there will be no Wednesday update this week...jk. But be warned Wednesday's update might be a little on the short side (I don't actually know though, the new format is kind fattening everything up so it could be regular sized). Anyhoo, I wanted to forewarn you guys, just in case. Generally, the chapters you read are weeks in the editing process. I attempt to make sure every "i" is dotted and "t" is crossed. I do revision after revision, editing and re-editing until I'm content (let's not go so far as to say happy) with the result. Unfortunately, in the coming weeks, that's not always going to be the case. As I said last week, I jumped back and forth writing out of sequence so some parts of each new chapter might have been edited to within an inch of its life while other parts are poppin' fresh. As a result, you might see a lot more grammatical and spelling errors than you're accustomed to. Personally, I hate that and will endeavor to give you clean work but I won't always catch everything (I'm a little disgusted with last week's contribution honestly - it was riddled with typos). Anyway, what that will also mean is because I'm obsessed with tinkering (which is why all my stuff takes so long) if you reread chapters later, you might find small alterations. Most will be cosmetic, I don't substantially edit my stuff after I've published it, but it might be a smidge different. Don't be alarmed. It will never be a case that I write that the butler did it on Monday and change it to the scullery maid by Friday. Otherwise, I hope you like it. And as always, don't forget you can always hit me up with questions or comments. I love hearing from you!

* * *

 _7/30/15_ 14:26 _CAT_

Medical Station Omicron, Rwanda

"No offense to all the doctors but what if after all this, they don't come up with anything?" Glenn said avoiding the glares he was getting from Rosita and Sasha.

"They're working day and night," Dr. Cloyd said then.

"I know that but they're only human. I'm just saying, 'What If?' Obviously, I hope this won't happen."

He shrugged defensively, looking to Michonne for a modicum of sympathy.

She tried to smile understandingly but they had an audience and Glenn had forgotten that.

The three women looked at Glenn, along with a dozen other pairs of eyes that slid his way as his line of thinking brought the whole mood of the room down. _This wasn't exactly a conversation for public consumption_ , Michonne thought but there wasn't any way to uncrack that egg.

'Her people', and Michonne was proud to call them that, Glenn, Sasha, and Rosita since they'd arrived had become like celebrities. Michonne supposed they were just a more interesting, fun and most importantly, _safe_ group. It had quickly become apparent that even unarmed as they were, Michonne's group gave Dr. Lerner's people a sense of security and normalcy. Ngangabouka's soldiers seemed prone to disturbance— which because they were basically teenagers amounted to lots of fights and arguments. But her people proved a mature and good, if starkly outnumbered, counterbalance to Ngangabouka's rowdy young jailers. Dawn's people tended, Michonne had noticed once she began wandering around the installation, to gravitate toward Glenn and the others too. During evening leisure time and afternoon breaks, Glenn, Sasha, and Rosita always wound up holding a kind of court. Even some of Ngangabouka's people stuck close to them —for more than just monitoring purposes— to which her seasoned soldiers didn't even bat an eyelash. In the end, Michonne's group just set a tone that put people at ease. And as a result, a friendly card game that had originally had three players in a few hours had blossomed to seven players and quite a few spectators.

"Look, he has the right to ask. We'd be foolish not to," Michonne answered taking up for him tepidly. "...But let's try to remain in the here and now...for right now," She tilted her head down but allowed her eyes to quickly traverse the room making eye contact with a select few so they all understood what she was saying.

They had too much exposure to discuss that the way they needed to now, but they _would_ discuss it. It was a legitimate question as far as Michonne was concerned. Already a trip that was supposed to be a twenty-four-hour jaunt had bloomed into more. _Thirty-two at last count._ In the interim, Rick had sent the first in what would be a series of messages to let the group know they'd gotten there safely. But he'd also shared the newest developments and that had thrown everyone into fits of doubt and worry.

 _Jesus and Maitland were dead. Mamet was infected and in a coma._

They already knew, of course, but when the whole group, including Nganagbouka's people, found out they had been rocked and thoroughly unsettled by the news. It seemed as if things didn't get worse than that. Except it did...in this new world, it could always get worse and Michonne feared for her group at least, they were all just waiting, treading water, until it did.

The other part of the bad news, a piece Michonne didn't feel comfortable sharing with the others although it was clear from Glenn's comments that they suspected it, was that it also meant no one knew exactly when Rick, Carol, and Daryl were coming back. No one, including Rick himself, had any idea how long it was going to take now. Apparently, despite the unfortunate nature of Mamet's infection, it had opened up new investigative avenues that the WHO scientists were eager to explore. No one could pin down how long that would take and knowing Rick and his Marines, they weren't about to leave their doctor there to be possibly vivisected by overzealous scientists espousing "the greater good" in the meantime. Which meant, to her dismay that until Milton died or woke up, no one was going anywhere.

...And Michonne, as much as she hated it, _completely_ understood. As a Black woman with a healthy appreciation for modern medical history, no matter how anxious she was to have Rick back, her conscience couldn't condone leaving Milton behind to be anyone's guinea pig. Left to their own devices, Michonne had little confidence in the medical ethics of the doctors she was surrounded by here. She hadn't shared her unease with Rick, but the doctors in their facility made her wary. Something awful had happened in this station before they arrived and Michonne had yet to get to the bottom of it. And in light of that, she had very little faith that the doctors in Scotland were all that much better.

"Call," Michonne said finally, trying to focus in on what was in front of her rather than the hodge-podge of her thoughts.

She looked down at the cards cradled in her hands then back at Rosita's completely blank face.

It wasn't a great hand but Glenn had been dealing garbage all afternoon. Michonne doubted she needed much more that what she had to best the group. But as her remaining worthy opponent, Rosita was proving to be a much better player than her companions.

"King Kong," Michonne said laying her cards down triumphantly and reaching for the pile of M&M's and Reeses' Pieces on the table.

"Hold up, Miss Lady," Sgt. Espinosa stayed Michonne's hand with an outstretched palm. "I got them same Gorillas."

She put both her cards down individually revealing a Queen and a King. Michonne had a King and a nine. Her eyes widened in surprise. _What were the odds?_ She chuckled to herself. She'd been saying that about everything for days now. Common sense should have dictated that by this point she would have stopped asking.

"Wait, what does that mean?" Denise asked Sasha. The doctor, having taken a brief meal break from her work in a lab downstairs, had gotten caught up in the group's game of Texas Hold 'Em.

"Since they both have a King and there's a King in the well, they both have a _Pair of Kings_. In which case, it depends on who can make the better hand with it." Sasha leaned in and explained.

Once she had folded herself, Sasha had been doing a running commentary for all the poker novices that were watching. It was a surprisingly large number.

"I do believe that The Sergeant has the better hand. That lady she has for a kicker declares her the Queen of this here game." Dr. Porter, sitting off to the side and perusing a comic book, remarked in his droll Texan accent.

Michonne conceded with a smile despite the loss as Rosita rolled her eyes at the doctor. He seemed to be infatuated with the sergeant. A feeling she did not reciprocate, but that didn't stop him from following her around like a lost puppy. Michonne though it was funny, though she could see what Rick and the others found odd about Dr. Porter. He was a little off-kilter but as her grandmother used to say, it took all kinds to make the world go round. Supposedly, he was an asset to the medical team, though she hadn't yet seen him do anything besides stand around looking awkward.

Glenn, who had watched the final hand go around as an observer instead of a player, grabbed up the cards and began shuffling the deck again. "Looks like The Gambler has finally met her match."

"Another round?" He asked with a wry smile.

"Yeah, I'd like to win my Peppermint patties back," Sasha pouted.

"And my Skittles," A redheaded lab tech named Holly chimed in.

"I think I might take a break," Michonne hedged, the competitive, sort of sore loser in her feeling the thoroughly unexpected sting of defeat.

"You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. Know when to walk away and know when to run…" Scott sang teasingly from the other side of the table in a surprising sweet baritone. He and a few of the other lab techs had followed Denise's lead and chosen to spend their downtime in the lounge with Michonne's group.

"Gimme a break, guys," Michonne said smiling as the whole group spontaneously began humming the old Kenny Rogers hit. She had no one but herself to blame for the turnabout. They could have played with the poker chips that they'd found in the lounge closet along with the table and deck of cards. But Michonne's hubris had whispered to her that it would be more fun winning candy from a bunch of marks. It was supposed to be a welcome distraction from pining after Rick like a love-sick grade-schooler. But now, she'd have blushed scarlet if she could have, being serenaded by the group while the Sergeant sat across from her eating the winnings that Michonne felt rightfully should have been hers.

After a moment, even Ngangabouka's boys, who didn't seem to know the melody precisely, did their best to smile and hum along. Rosita just smirked as she dragged the towering pile of M&M's over to her side of the card table, popping the stray ones in her mouth as she went along.

"Better luck next time," said a voice from behind her as a hand fell heavily onto her shoulder.

Michonne looked up and the smiles died on everyone's lips as the melodious humming came to a halt.

 _Ngangabouka_.

Because she counted and kept track of all the extremely unpleasant occurrences of her life, like the number of times she'd ever been stung by a bee or broken a bone, she knew this was the fifth time he'd touched her. She fought the impulse to shrug his hand off and recoil. The room grew silent.

"I just wanted you to know, Rick has sent you another message. There's another one for you bunch too. Dr. Lerner's looking for you both," He gestured with his head toward Denise and Eugene.

Denise rose to go, tugging along a more reluctant Eugene. The rest of the group seemed to dissipate due to the distinct change in mood until only Glenn, Sasha, Rosita and Scott remained.

"How are you all doing today?" Ngangabouka inquired solicitously. Apparently, he was attempting to make small talk even as most of his own people scattered like flies.

Michonne didn't know what had come over him but the Ngangabouka of the past few days was like a different man. In Rick's absence, he'd been hospitable, courteous and accommodating. He refused to stop his goons from shadowing them constantly but there was little menace to their ubiquity. And in fact, as today's marathon card game proved, their omnipresence was now driven primarily by plain old curiosity.

"We're fine," Michonne answered finally as the silence turned awkward. He was talking to her anyway. _He rarely had anything to say to anyone else of her group._

"Would you like some help up to the office?"

"That's okay, we can take her," Glenn interjected then, but politely.

The sustained calm and convivial nature of their stay here had not made any of Michonne's companions lax. She still had an escort everywhere she went. But more and more, she could see that she was just delaying the inevitable. Ngangabouka wanted something from her. She was just waiting to see what it was.

"No," She reached across the table to pat Glenn's arm just above the wrist. It was time to stop avoiding it and meet him head-on. Who was to say when Ngangabouka would stop being polite, angling for a way to get to her alone and start using his usual method of intimidation or actual injury to achieve his end. "Mr. Ngangabouka can take me. You guys finish the game."

Her group all exchanged panicked glances. Michonne saw the entire conversation play out across their expressions. As Michonne had already discovered, none of them had particularly good poker faces. She imagined Ngangabouka saw it all as well.

"Don't worry, I'll get her back to you in one piece," He said then confirming as much.

She gave them a look, trying to transmit her sense of calm to them. She believed, at least in this very narrow circumstance, stuck together as they all were, Ngangabouka was forced to be truthful. She had nothing to fear from him. They remained quiet, although Rosita's version of that included arms crossed tightly over her chest and mouth set with a scowl plastered across her face.

Rising slowly, parts she couldn't even identify on her body still hurting, Michonne stood back from the table. Ngangabouka pulled her chair out for her and then offered her his arm to lean on, in a gentlemanly fashion. Michonne hesitated, as she always did whenever he did this, before placing her hand very deliberately on his forearm. Her people watched carefully, conspicuously silent. It had taken a while, since as a civilian she was outside their formal chain of command, for them to fully respect that Rick's word was not necessarily the final one on a variety of subjects. But they'd gotten it and this was their first true test. Michonne watched as Sasha held Glenn's wrist on the table.

"I'll see you guys in my room in about thirty minutes to discuss whatever Captain Grimes wrote in his email." She instructed before willingly letting Ngangabouka lead her away.

They'd barely made it to the hallway before he began to speak.

"Michonne," He always said her name as if they were old friends, which irritated her. "I—"

"How are your people?" She cut him off to ask. "Rick said the Sanctuary's resources were very limited."

He looked at her, his face awash with surprise at her concern but then just smiled.

"He told you about that, did he?"

"Of course. Do you think we would have even agreed to go across the street for you otherwise? ...And it wouldn't have mattered _who_ you thought you were holding over his head." She spoke pointedly, so he knew that she knew about his death threats. Regardless of this new leaf he was trying to turn over, Michonne knew what kind of man she was dealing with.

"Told you about that too," He chuckled to himself. "Not much light passes between you and the Captain, eh?"

"No. I suppose not."

It was Michonne's turn to be taken aback. She'd never thought of it that way before but it was true. For Rick and her, good communication had always been like second nature. They'd rarely kept secrets from one another and even in the midst of discord, whether now or in their UN days, they always chose to act in accord and speak with one voice. They didn't even discuss it, they just did it. Still, it was only in the last few days that Michonne had begun to see how unusual that was, to see what people had been commenting on for years. She and Rick were partners in the purest sense of the word... _even if it wasn't quite so "pure" anymore._

He nodded, amused, "They're making due. We have hunting parties going out in waves to scavenge. The weather has been bad which has kept those fuckers to a minimum but it has also made game animals elusive too."

She nodded grimly. She felt sympathy for the people trapped at The Sanctuary. It was in Ngangabouka's concern for them that Michonne found the only basis for any common ground with him. She leaned into it now.

"I worry that Rick won't be back in time to give you something that can help them. Most of them anyway." She admitted grimly.

"You seem awfully confident Rick's even coming back at all."

It was eerily similar to the sentiment Glenn had just expressed but in a different way. It was clearly on everyone's mind.

"I am," She stated emphatically. She wasn't sure she understood his point, other than to plainly undermine Rick in some way as he seemed to try every time they spoke now. "But aren't you too? Wasn't that the whole point of this?"

"It was but they might have a whole lot of nothing in Scotland. Or he could always just decide to take whatever they do have back to your superiors as ordered and leave you all here."

"I suppose he could, but that would be leaving you and all your people here and at the Sanctuary to die. He wouldn't do that."

"You mean, he wouldn't leave _you_ here to die." Ngangabouka clarified.

"That too," She nodded, there was no point in false modesty. "But he also promised he'd come back, why wouldn't I choose to believe it?"

"People lie for all sorts of reasons, Ms. Philippe."

"Rick has his orders to fulfill, true. He probably even has other reasons to get back to the States. And if they somehow ended up being more urgent or important than coming back here, then he'd just tell me. He wouldn't need to lie. And believe it or not, I'd understand," She was deliberately vague to protect Rick's privacy. She didn't know what Ngangabouka could do with information about Carl and Judith even from eight thousand miles away but she was sure if he could figure out something, he would.

"He's stupidly honest then."

"I suppose he is, but why wouldn't we be honest with one another?" She asked genuinely curious. "When you base your actions on honor, not fear, it still inspires similar levels of loyalty in others."

"Apparently." He chuckled at her as if she was being hopelessly näive.

"Look," She said trying to control her exasperation with whatever he was attempting to do. "If you're asking if I trust him and believe in him, the answer is yes. If you are wondering if I believe that he can be relied upon to come through, the answer is also yes. And that is regardless of who he left here as 'collateral' for you. I have no doubt he'll be back with what you need because he said he would."

"That kind of faith is inspiring," Ngangabouka said, clearly just humoring her.

"It's only _faith_ when there is no proof to merit your belief. I _know_ him. And I _trust_ him... because I have proof. I know he'll be back because Rick has proven on more than one occasion that he will do what he says." She spoke firmly, pointedly bringing up her previous time in Ngangabouka's custody without actually saying the words.

He seemed to get her drift and pursed his lips as if he was thinking her statement over. They were both silent for long moments as they walked down the long hall to the elevator. So much so that Michonne thought the conversation was over until he spoke again.

"I'm sorry for that..."

Michonne was unable to speak. His face seemed genuinely contrite. She didn't know how to reconcile this behavior with the brutally aggressive man she had come to know. She didn't know where to file this contrition.

"I really do admire your faith in him...but you must know things happen, circumstances change, Michonne. Sometimes you end up becoming someone the people who knew you before wouldn't recognize, having done things you couldn't imagine, all to keep promises you know you shouldn't have made in the first place. And that's not lies, that's _life_. Even superheroes, like your Captain Grimes, eventually fail to keep their word. Despite all their best efforts and good intentions."

His expression darkened and Michonne knew instantly this was a not-so-veiled reference to his own story. To the promises he had made to his wife and her family. To the promise his friend David had failed to keep to protect them and Ngangabouka's metamorphosis into the thing he was now —at once both a folk hero and a tyrant. Neither man had fulfilled their oaths and as a result, many people died, both then and in the many subsequent years since. She felt a degree of sympathy but somehow her mind rejected any implied parallel with Rick.

 _She was not Lucille Ngangabouka and he was not Rick. Their circumstances_ _were_ not _the same._

"I had to learn how to face a world without her, and I suppose you'll learn too…" Ngangabouka pronounced his voice trailing off as if that was a private thought given voice. "...or die."

"I mean, if it comes to that, of course," He resumed the jocular tone he'd had initially. His horrible predatory smile returning as the brief window to his innermost thoughts closed firmly.

Still, something about that was all far too ominous for Michonne's liking and definitely too pointed for her to ignore. She suddenly found herself anxious to see Rick's message. It was bad enough that they couldn't speak directly to each other, relegated instead to electronic missives like some bizarre twist on turn-of-the-previous-century love-birds. Currently, they existed in a twilight reality where computerized communication had somehow reverted to pre-industrial times despite the near-constant hum of electric machines that quite literally filled the building with sound. _At moments like these, she needed to talk to Rick, to hear his voice._

It frustrated Michonne, the lack of direct communication but Glenn, for some reason, had taken it upon himself in the off-hours to find a solution. Still, that was in the works and until then, old-school email was their only reliable avenue of communication. To hear Glenn tell it, it was something about an outdated LAN network in this part of the world and the use of bandwidth allotted for VPN. But that was as far as she got in his explanations before her eyes glazed over and he began to sound like one of the adults in a Peanuts special. Michonne just knew she didn't like this. She didn't like Ngangabouka's creeping obsequiousness, the way he was trying to undermine her faith in Rick. He thought she didn't recognize the way his words constantly strove to question her determination. But she knew she could continue to resist if only she could see Rick's face as she spoke to him in the way Ngangabouka could still somehow see the people at the Sanctuary.

"Michonne, I want—" He started again suddenly after a long silence during which the elevator arrived and they stepped on.

Just then, a small hand appeared, arresting the elevator doors' slow slide shut. Ariane appeared suddenly in the open doorway, looking back at them. She'd walked down the hall so stealthily that neither of them had heard her approach. Ngangabouka reached out and pressed the button quickly to hold the door open before it closed in her face.

"Peter," She started before she saw Michonne's hand placed primly on his extended forearm as if they were two characters in a Victorian-era novel.

Ngangabouka let go of the button then and put his hand firmly atop of Michonne's in an effort to keep it there. Ariane hesitated, mouth open, clearly stunned. She stopped the door again with her hand and stood there for a moment unspeaking.

"Yes?" He said impatiently as if it was all perfectly normal.

Michonne tugged her hand free of his and slipped it back down to her side quickly, honestly distressed and disgusted to suddenly feel as if they'd been "caught" for some reason.

 _Whatever game these two were playing,_ Michonne realized at that moment _, she wanted no part of it._ That was another feeling that was strangely familiar.

"They've called for you. You are needed upstairs," Ariane glowered at Michonne as she spoke to her husband.

Michonne attempted to look anywhere else but the young woman's face. It felt absolutely ridiculous to experience even an nth degree of guilt but under Ariane's withering gaze, inexplicably Michonne found that she did. She didn't like or understand the dynamic between the two of them...and she really didn't want to.

"I'm sure you can deal with it." He said dismissively. "I'm taking Ms. Philippe downstairs to retrieve her message from the Captain."

"They're your imbeciles," She replied icily. "If I could, I would not have come for you."

The very fact of it seemed to gall Ariane. It was obvious, to Michonne at least, that she was telling the truth. The set of her mouth said that the woman wouldn't have asked for help if she could help it. In her adulthood, Ariane and Ngangabouka certainly behaved as husband and wife, Michonne noted for the dozenth time. The frightened mouse of a girl Ariane had seemed when Michonne knew her before was gone, replaced with a flinty, argumentative woman. It didn't look like a particularly good marriage but nevertheless, it was one Michonne recognized.

"If Miss Michonne requires assistance getting to the office, I can take her." Ariane offered with a sigh, while simultaneously seeming extremely put out by the imposition of actually doing it.

"I think I can get there by myself," Michonne interjected then.

 _In fact, she knew she could but didn't see the point of letting them know that_.

She'd already spent her entire first day mobile reconnoitering the facility with Sasha. At this point, Michonne could probably draw a floor plan of certain areas from memory. But without one of those blasted ID badges Ngangabouka's people possessed, it was all for naught. And that was what she was angling for in that moment.

"No," Ngangabouka said with irritation, keeping his eyes on Ariane. "I told your little Asian friend—"

" _Glenn_."

"I told _Glenn_ that _I_ would escort you safely there myself and my Little Bird is not going to interrupt that." The smile grew but it was distinctly like the rumbling warning a rattlesnake gave before a strike.

Ariane bristled but didn't contradict him, nodding once. In that moment, Michonne supposed maybe a lot _had_ changed but not as much as she previously thought. Ariane cut her eyes at Michonne then after a long appraising glare that Michonne almost felt on her skin. She then sucked her teeth loudly and released the elevator door. The doors came together evenly, closing on her scowling face.

Inside, Michonne turned on Ngangabouka as he pressed the button and swiped his keycard.

"I don't know what game you think you're playing with me and Ariane, but I won't participate. Your wife has nothing to fear from me and if you continue this nonsense, I plan to tell her so."

"Oh, you never know." He said grinning and rocking back on his heels, not even pretending he didn't know what she was talking about. "But, I might not do that, if I were you."

"Oh but I _do_ know. And not even if you were _the_ last man—"

"—On your last day on Earth. I know. I _didn't_ forget, you made it _quite_ clear. But it sure does look more and more like we're getting closer and closer to that, doesn't it?" He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

"Please," Michonne bristled, sucking her teeth herself. "Not nearly close enough for you to _seriously_ think you'd have a snowball's chance in hell."

"Oof, body-blow, ouch! There she is! The Michonne I know and lo—" Ngangabouka burst out laughing. "I was wondering when you'd finally feel well enough to come out of your corner swinging. "

Despite everything, she did feel a tiny bit better and it had made her tongue a bit sharper. So, she smirked begrudgingly as he continued to laugh, unwillingly affected by his good-humor.

"Look, don't worry about her. It's not what you think anyway. She just hasn't forgiven you and your beloved Captain for the death of her idiot brother."

"What?" Michonne gasped, the small remnants of the earlier smile slipping off her face.

"What? Don't tell me you're one of those ridiculous 'politically correct' people? Your Rick killed him what do you care now what he was called?" He rolled his eyes and sighed looking at her stricken expression. "Fine, idiot _savant_."

"Fabian's dead? When?" She ignored the whole rest of what he said. This was the only part that mattered.

He looked at her curiously. "Four years ago? Like I said, I've decided not to hold the things you and your captain did that night to escape against you. _Tabula rasa_ , I say. Fabian was a waste of resources, anyway."

It was an incredibly callous statement from a callous man. Michonne didn't know why she expected better of him. She scolded herself internally for sharing even a moment of mirth with him and then felt guilty for having shamed Rick for sharing far less before. Still, all that didn't account for what he'd just said.

 _He thought she and Rick had killed Fabian._

"Fabian was harmless. Rick would never have hurt him to escape," Michonne insisted. "And we wouldn't even have had to, Fabian would never have hurt me. He just wanted to study the stars."

Her eyes moistened with unshed tears. Despite all their recent losses, or maybe because of them and the state of things now, Michonne felt an inexplicably profound sadness at the news. His was an enormous potential completely lost, first to Ngangabouka's avarice and then to the world.

"Is he really dead?"

Ngangabouka again looked genuinely surprised, only nodding in answer to the question. She could tell he was not expecting this reaction from her.

"He did get hurt, I admit it. _Shane_ struck him but that was before Rick even arrived. But the last time Shane and I saw Fabian, he was alive and well and sleeping locked up in the room you kept me in," Michonne insisted her hand gripping the fabric over her heart as if she were swearing to it.

Ngangabouka frowned looking truly perplexed. "That is NOT what my Little Bird told me."

"I really don't care what she told you. But at this point, what would be the point of me lying?" She folded her arms across her chest defiantly and glared at him. "Not that I actually give a good goddamn what you think...about anything. But I'm telling the truth."

He smirked at that, one side of his mouth sliding slowly upward. He really did like her sass, she realized unnerved.

The elevator came to a smooth stop and the doors opened before them but neither of them stepped out for a moment, staring at each other.

"I _do_ believe you, Ms. Philippe. And I think that it's time you finally tell me just how you and your friends got off my compound."

Michonne nodded. Bizarrely, for once she agreed with him.

* * *

 _7/30/15 18:56 GMT_

WHO Laboratory - Deptford, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

"Rick, it was the best I could do."

"Aren't you supposed to be the Deputy Secretary-General of the U.N.? Aren't you the second highest—"

"The highest. We got word two days ago that the plane carrying Xiao-Bing's envoy never made it off the tarmac in Frankfurt," Hershel corrected him.

Rick paused, instantly losing steam. He'd only ever met the Secretary-General twice before but he seemed like a good and decent person. He knew he was a good friend of Hershel's. "Hersh, I'm sorry."

"Rick, if I stopped to tally up all the people we'd lost in the past few days, I would literally never stop counting to eat or sleep. Not that I'm actually getting any sleep anyway," Hershel sighed heavily as if the weight of the world rested on his shoulders and Rick realized, in a way, it did.

"Why didn't you have them bring Beth to you? Not that I'm not grateful you sent her with Carl and Judith," Rick asked looking at Hershel's weary face. Nothing made Hershel as happy or as peaceful as time spent with his family. It had always been that way. And to look at him, he clearly needed some of that enlivening now.

Rick had been overjoyed when he discovered the WHO building had functional video conferencing facilities. But that happiness was somewhat short-lived when he discovered that it only permitted him to speak with the rest of Europe and some of the US. The Navy tech Rick berated on the phone while he was trying to get it working told him it had something to do with satellite-acquisition and geo-positioning. Still, unless the explanation could lead to it being fixed so that he could speak to Michonne, he honestly didn't give a shit. Yet, it had allowed him a chance to have an actual face to face conversation with Hershel and while that wasn't quite a consolation, it was close. Hershel was a sight for sore eyes. Even if he looked more haggard and worn down than the last time Rick saw him, just seeing his face made Rick happy.

Rick noticed that Hershel was quiet for a moment as if he was figuring out what to say. In the course of their conversation, they'd both taken turns looking that way as they updated each other. Telling Hershel where Michonne was, with whom and in what condition he'd left her, was one of the hardest conversations Rick had ever had in his life. It felt like he was telling him he'd lost yet another one of the man's daughters on his watch.

"Son," Hershel started and Rick's heart felt like it had been put in a vice. "It's been decided. As of 07:00 hours Eastern Standard time today New York City is lost...officially."

 _That_ wasn't what he had expected Hershel to say. Rick swallowed hard hoping he didn't understand what he was being told.

"Meaning what?"

Hershel sighed again. "Meaning that there will be no further rescue attempts undertaken to rescue any survivors that remain here...including me and my staff."

"Fuck that! You just told me for all intents and purposes, you are now the Secretary-General of the UN—" Rick was irate but Hershel cut him off.

"And I'm the one who made that call —in conjunction with President Monroe. For as long as I'm still alive and uncompromised, I will continue making those decisions but that's why the Secretariat has a line of succession. Valeria is on the French aircraft carrier Foch somewhere in the Mediterranean," Rick watched Hershel take a deep breath and brace himself to finish his statement. "And it will be her job once I'm gone to make these hard calls. Even if they require her to risk her life."

Rick gripped the sides of the conference table he was seated at struggling not to shout.

"RISK? You aren't risking your life, you're ending it! What the hell are you thinking?" Rick recognized the slight hint of desperation in his voice as he spoke. "Hersh, you cannot do this!"

"Listen, we've all talk it over and it had to be done. We can't—"

"I don't fucking care what your advisors are telling you! When I get back there, I'm coming to get you. I don't give a shit what they say!" Rick said jumping up from his seat and pinching the inner corners of his eyes hard. He paced the floor restlessly as behind his eyes burned painfully.

"Rick, Rick," Hershel said his name calmly, coaxingly. "Rick, listen to me now, sit down."

"NO! This doesn't make any sense! HOW DO YOU WRITE OFF AN ENTIRE CITY OF 8.5 MILLION PEOPLE?" Rick's throat was suddenly hoarse and his voice thick with emotion.

"Rick, listen to me," Hershel continued in his soothing baritone. "We've already done it. Over a dozen times yesterday alone. Lima, Rio, Prague, Mexico City has 25 million people in it. We'll do it again tomorrow and God help us, probably the day after that and the day after that one. We actually waited on New York. That was my selfishness and, bless her, Deanna indulged an old man a little to allow me to make peace with my mortality."

"Indulged? Indulged!" Rick's voice trembled with fury as he prowled the perimeter of the conference room too agitated to stop. "Fuck that! She knows she should be getting you out of there! She's goddamned lucky to have you and she knows it! Indulged, are you kidding me? You are the smartest, wisest, kindest, gentlest man, she needs you..."

Rick's voice finally broke and when he looked back up at the giant screen in front of him, he could barely make out Hershel's face through a veil of yet-unshed tears in his eyes. "The UN needs you, Beth needs you, Michonne needs you...I do."

"I can't do—" Rick dissolved into sobs that racked his body. He spun away to face the wall blocking Hershel's view of him on the giant screen. His head hung low and his shoulders shook until he had to brace himself with his palms flat against the cold wall paneling to keep himself upright.

"Son, sit down." Hershel said softly in a tone Rick had only ever heard him use with his daughters. "Rick, can you hear me?"

Rick's chest ached and his eyes ached and his back ached and his head ached. Suddenly, all the fatigue from all the sleep he hadn't been getting, hadn't allowed himself to get even after they'd arrived safely to this facility came down on him like an anvil. He turned slowly back to face Hershel, whose whole face seemed to take up all eighty inches of the screen right then. It would have been funny in an absurd way if Rick had had the capacity to laugh at that moment. He leaned back against the wall, unwilling to sit for fear that he may never rise out of the chair again.

"Son, the calculus of this decision was easy, even if the results were hard to deal with," Hershel started and Rick began to object. "Let me finish!"

Rick closed his mouth chastened as he might have been by a parent. His head hung down and he barely felt the strength to raise it to look at Hershel head-on.

"We must declare a region lost when the expenditure of personnel to rescue people in the area would be too high. We just can't ask people to go into those situations."

"You," Rick croaked, then cleared his throat and tried again. "You asked us to."

"I asked you to when we thought there was something that could be done."

"LOOK! I'M HERE! Michonne's there! We're doing it! And we're close, Hersh. We're so close!" Rick shouted, pointing wildly in a frantic effort to try and reason with him.

"Son, we've run the numbers, and run the contagion models and analyzed the propagation forecasts." Hershel's face grew grim. "Even if this works, you're no longer running a rescue mission, this is a salvage operation. It's about helping as many people as we can... People who have already saved themselves. People who've gotten to places we can reach them with minimal additional loss of life. People in defensible positions. These major cities just aren't it. And we decided, as important as it once was, New York City is just not viable anymore."

"But you," Rick began sinking to the floor and disappearing from Hershel's view as his butt hit the carpeting hard.

"No, let me be perfectly clear. _I decided_ , with the people in here with me in the bunker, that no further rescue operations should be undertaken to recover us. It was a hard decision that, actually President Monroe didn't initially agree with. Since we're in an underground bunker she wanted to bomb the city and pull us out of the crater, if you'll believe it," Rick could hear Hershel chuckling above him at the thought, which was oddly comforting.

"But then I had to remind the Secretary—I mean the President, that most of lower Manhattan is below sea level and has a high water table. We'd all drown before we could even be rescued."

Rick peered between the conference room chairs to see Hershel's face smiling on screen at the cruel irony of it all. Rick shook his head and smiled even as new tears welled in his eyes. He pulled himself off the floor and came back to the table as Hershel smiled down at him beatifically.

"I knew you could find the humor in that too, if you tried."

 _Same ole Hersh._

Rick took a good look at his face trying to memorize the details for posterity. It was greyer and older than when they first met but it was still the man who had been like a father to him, actually better than his real father, for nearly his entire adult life. Hershel Greene had saved him from becoming the man his father was, a mean, perpetually angry and disgruntled drunk. And he'd done it purely with the decency of his own character. He'd modeled for Rick what a good husband and father and citizen of the world looked like.

 _How could he just be asked to let him go?_

Rick had barely completed his freshman year in college when he lost his mother to cancer. And even though they'd all known it was coming, he left school and came back home anyway. Despite his efforts, his family still fell apart quickly after that. His younger brother, Jeffrey, barely seventeen at the time, ran to the West Coast, never to be seen again, except for through postcards to Rick and more recently, an annual Christmas card to the Lori and the kids. Meanwhile, his father disappeared further down a bottle, growing angrier and more violent. So after that, Rick was virtually alone. He, of course, still had Shane and Grandma Jean and a then-fledgling relationship with Lori, but other than that he floundered for a few years in the Marine Corp before he met Hershel's wife, Annette.

At the time, Rick was freshly out of officer candidate school but already beginning to regret his decision to reenlist. He was desperately unhappy, feeling like there had to be more to his life than being a grunt. In his heart, he knew he had joined the Corp for his father and had further become an officer to finally make the old man happy. _Yet, it didn't...for either of them._ Still, if he left, he knew he couldn't bear the thought of going back to King County to face Lori and his old man in failure and despair. He also bore immense guilt for dragging his best friend into the Corp with him.

But right then, just as everything seemed to be falling apart for the second time since his mother's death, a man he had barely even met and didn't really know, offered him the job of a lifetime. Out of the seeming blue, he offered Rick a chance to make a difference while traveling the globe on a mission of goodwill. It sounded insane and made-up. Rick barely knew what the United Nations did and certainly didn't think he, a country-boy from Georgia, had any skills to offer them, but Hershel was a good ole boy from Behind-God's-Back, Georgia too. Still, by then, Rick was newly married with an infant son and so it took a couple more years of convincing. Eventually, however, and with Lori's blessing, he jumped at the chance. At last, Jeff and his occasional, far-flung postcards weren't going to be the only way Rick got to see the world.

Of course, Hershel Greene had given him the hard sell, not just on the UN's mission in the world but on _life itself_. On how Rick could make the lives of others better. Meanwhile, the Greenes collectively sold Rick on what life could be for him personally, on what a happy family with Lori and what healthy fatherhood with Carl could really look like. Long before Rick finally agreed to chuck everything he knew and join Hershel's adventure/crusade, he and Annette had welcomed Rick and Lori into their home and made them a part of the family. As a result, over the years since, they had been there to help the Greene family bury their matriarch and to watch with Hershel as Maggie and Beth grew into women. In return, along with everything else, Hershel had given Rick a career that truly inspired him, a means to support his family, and introduced him, quite accidentally, to the love of his life.

 _How could he possibly hope to thank the man for all that? How could he possibly be expected to sit by idly and let that man die?_

"Rick," Hershel called out to him, pulling him back from his reminisces. "This isn't the way I planned for this conversation to go. _None of it._ But I need to ask you something."

Rick dragged a hand over his face and took a breath trying to sober up. His head pounded and his eyes were now so irritated that in the tv monitor's bright glare he was seeing halos around Hershel's face.

"Yeah," Rick said looking down at his hands splayed open on the conference table. So much was slipping through his fingers, he was beginning to doubt their physical capacity.

"I need you to promise me you'll take care of Bethie."

Rick looked up quickly and another single tear streaked down his face before he could stop it. He gasped, shaking his head but unable to speak.

"She thinks of you as an older brother and as you know, I've always thought of you as the son Missy and I never had," Hershel said referring to his wife by her pet name. "I can't think of anyone I'd trust with her well-being more."

Rick reached up and squeezed his temples trying to focus on his breathing before he hyperventilated.

"Hersh, Beth needs you, I couldn't," Rick stammered unable to look up at the screen and make eye contact with him. "I, I—"

"Son, I know what you're gonna say."

Rick looked at him abruptly then.

"You still blame yourself for…for Maggie," Hershel paused. Rick knew talking about Maggie was always difficult for Hershel and Beth. He'd only had two conversations with Hershel where her name was even uttered in the past four years since her funeral.

"Yes, but—"

"Son, I know you did the best you could for my girl. Even if you don't know it, I do. I always have," Hershel spoke with conviction.

Rick suddenly felt sick. Once again, like with Negan appearing out of the blue, the sins of their past, secrets that he and Michonne alone bore in a tortured silence, rose from the dead to haunt them. _If this was going to be one of the last conversations he ever had with Hershel, he didn't want it to end this way..._ But, at long last, he owed the man the truth, the _real_ truth. He deserved to know what kind of man he was considering entrusting the most precious thing to him, his daughter, to.

"I know you love Michonne. And I believe you love my Bethie too..."

"I do," Rick answered flabbergasted. _If even Hershel knew, just how indiscreet had he and Michonne been once upon a time, exactly?_ Rick wondered suddenly.

"...I want you to get back to that lunatic and rescue my other girl and then I want you to take care of them both." Hershel directed him firmly.

He took a deep breath then as if working up to something else and Rick braced himself for another revelation. "As you know, my life has been dedicated to the tenets of pacifism... but I really think that if you were to happen to kill that motherfucker while you're at it, that just might be okay, too."

Rick snorted involuntarily, a brief cessation of his ongoing heartbreak. He nodded in agreement. "I'll certainly try."

Hershel sighed deeply "So then that's settled."

He did actually seem relieved. Rick could see fine creases on his face easing. _How to continue?_ Rick puzzled to himself —just because he'd agreed didn't mean he could go without telling Hershel the whole truth. And Hershel might change his mind once he knew, in fact, he would probably.

"You and Michonne will be her parents," Hershel said absently, more to himself than Rick but Rick still grabbed at his own face in shame. "I know you think since she's eighteen she's beyond needing that but I've always felt no one is too old to have a mother and father, if they can manage it."

 _Yes._ Hershel Greene was living proof-positive of that as far as Rick was concerned. Yet, the more Hershel spoke, the sicker Rick began to feel.

"I believe in you two. I believe if anyone has the capacity to fashion a life out of all this chaos, it'll be you and Michonne. I know the type of people you both are. I know the type of people I watched you both grow to be. Honestly, I was concerned when Maggie first told me that the two of you were in love. It made sense, both of you so good and decent. But I was sick for you. I was convinced y'all just had years of heartache ahead of you. Then my Meg died and you both blamed yourselves and went your separate ways. And I thought, 'Well, that's that, then. Two of my favorite people in the world doomed to broken-heartedness.' She went out and found Mike again and you still had Lori. And neither of you would ever betray someone else's trust..."

As he continued, Rick felt simultaneously captivated and nauseated by Hershel's words. Rick sank further into the chair while Hershel spoke on unaware, singing their praises.

"...But then suddenly— I couldn't believe it—I heard through the grapevine that Michonne broke it off with Mike and then a year later, you called me to tell me you and Lori were splitting. And, I'll tell you, right then and there, I knew there was such a thing as fate, the Grand Design! I mean, how else to explain it? Even in this, my word, when you called me and then Michonne called me a minute later? Son, I felt the hand of God Almighty at work!"

"Hersh," Rick scoffed, deeply ashamed, even though in his heart of hearts he felt the same thing. _This was just embarrassing._ "C'mon now."

"Hand to God, when I knew my Bethie was safe there with you both, I knew she would be okay," Hershel put his palm up as if affirming an oath. "And that's why I need you to take her on. I wouldn't be able to rest without knowing she will be able to count on y'all. I know it's a lot...and after this whole mess you might feel like y'all just need a break—"

"We're not taking any breaks." Rick cut him off. "We'll look out for her, Hersh. Don't worry. She's already family."

For the first time in their conversation, Rick saw Hershel's eyes well up. He'd only ever seen him cry twice before: At the burials of his wife and daughter. "Rick, thank y—"

Rick took a quick breath before cutting him off. " _Just wait._ Before you start thanking me, I have to tell you something about Maggie's death. And if you change your mind once you know, that's okay. Michonne and I will still do our best to see to it that Beth is safe…."


	59. Chapter 59

_May 11th 2011_

 _Location Unknown, DRC_

"What do you plan to do, Shane?" Michonne asked of him hoping to pull him into a conversation.

He was walking only a step or two behind her but more and more his silence exuded menace. There was an unintentional and unspoken double meaning to her words, that in the moment as she looked back at him, he seemed to comprehend as well. By moonlight, she still could see the somewhat solemn look on his face. Even with the majority of his face obscured by shadow, she'd known Shane long enough to tell when he was working up to something.

"What? You worried about me?" Shane looked into her eyes and chuckled mirthlessly.

"I'm worried about Rick."

"Oh," He rolled his eyes, "Of course you are."

She stumbled again, trying improbably to keep her eyes both on Shane and on where she was going simultaneously.

"Don't worry, he'll be fine as long as he plays ball."

"What does that mean?" Michonne stopped, looking at him seriously. "How can you _still_ think you'll get away with this? Even if I had disappeared, Rick and Maggie are—"

"Why don't you let me worry about them, Pretty Lady, huh? And just be grateful I'm getting you outta here." He deliberately shined the light in her eyes, momentarily blinding her.

She put one hand in front of her face to shield her eyes and put the other to her chest. Her fingers fluttered above the sharpened bone she'd nearly forgotten was concealed there. But she didn't reach for it.

 _Not yet_.

"What do I have to be grateful for?" She challenged. "Do you think anyone is gonna be grateful to you, Shane? You've ruined everyone's lives! This is going to torpedo Maggie's career."

"No, it won't. Everything is under control," He sighed as if his patience were truly being tested. "Tell me, why can't you imagine that I have a brain in my head, huh? Or better yet, manage, even now, to just mind your own fuckin' business, Michonne? _Goddamn_!"

Shane was clearly delusional if he thought he could just walk back all that had happened and sweep it under the rug. But it was obvious to Michonne now that that was his thought-process.

"Because," She sighed in return calmly, "I care about them."

"And I don't? That's your problem, Michonne, you're always so fuckin' superior. You think just because I don't have an Ivy League degree like you, I'm some sort of idiot? You think I don't have a plan? That I didn't have some idea of what I would do if someone ever found out or came lookin'?"

The self-assuredness in his words set off a chorus of red flags for Michonne. _Of course, he did. She didn't know why she had doubted that._ Despite what he clearly thought, Michonne knew that though Shane was a good ole boy, he was by no means stupid. And if he'd taken even half as much care with his plans as he did with his personal property and his personal space, she should have already guessed he had a fairly solid escape route.

"Rick—" She began before he cut her off.

"I've known that boy since he was ten years old. I can handle Rick," Shane explained assuredly.

"You have something on him." She didn't have the nearly thirty years of friendship with Rick under her belt that Shane did but Michonne knew Rick well enough to be certain that there was only one way Shane could hope to keep him under control. "Something involving Lori or Carl."

She couldn't make out the entirety of Shane's expression but she could see the tightening around his mouth and the clenching of his jaw.

"You always think you're so clever, makin' like Scooby-doo or some shit. But I would never hurt them. Rick doesn't _ever_ have to worry about that."

"But you still _involved_ them, didn't you?" Michonne stated it as fact even though she was still speculating.

"All he has to do is cooperate and no one will ever be the wiser," Shane explained. "No muss, no fuss."

"What did you do?"

He hesitated before answering.

"All the money I've made, plus some is in an account in Carl's name..."

Michonne felt faint for a moment. She paused and braced herself against the nearest tree.

"...No one'll ever know if Rick just keeps his mouth shut. It's just insurance," Shane explained defensively. "That's all."

"Shane!" Michonne couldn't help chastising him, _Rick would kill him for involving Carl..._ in any way _._ "So what? This is your idea of mutually-assured destruction? Rick says anything and you ruin him?"

"It started as his college fund," Shane explained as if that somehow made it better instead of worse. "I would transfer a little in every time I got a payday. Just a rainy-day fund in case anything ever happened to Rick. To help take care of them. Just a little something, just in case. I only transferred the majority of the money into his account a couple days ago."

"How?"

"I'm his godfather. I started the account for him when he was born. Rick doesn't know about it. It was my intention to leave my grandmother's house to Carl if anything ever happened to me. And he'd need money to help keep it up...you know, or go to college or anything else he decided to do with it."

Michonne shook her head. Her grandmother had always warned her, _the path to hell was paved with good intentions._ And Shane was headed straight to hell with gasoline drawers on.

"That could still be traced back to you," Michonne retorted hoping against hope that this wasn't as air-tight a frame up as it seemed.

"I named Lori as the trustee long ago and she's signed off on every transfer since. She trusts me...like Rick does. Neither of them has ever really read any paperwork I put in front of them."

 _Lori knew about this? Probably not where the money was coming from but still…._

"Oh My God," Michonne stopped mid-step, grasping at the implication of his statement. Besides Carl's incriminating bank account, that meant hundreds of pages of sensitive UN business manipulated by Shane could have been rubber stamped by Rick without him realizing it. It meant Rick might have been more implicated in what Shane was doing then he knew...Lori certainly was.

"Don't give me that look. As long as he doesn't say anything it'll be fine," He put the light in her face again and suddenly all she could see were halos of light and his pant legs and shoes.

"Shane, they're doing an audit! If Rick found out, you don't think they will? What about the guys working with you at AfriCOM? You have something on all of them too?"

"Don't stop moving," He said harshly obviously tired of her questioning. Shane pushed her forward turning her away, finally dispensing with the idea that this was anything but a forced march. He wiped the slick muck that coated her off his hand on his jeans as he spoke. "I'm not worried, I don't deal directly with those idiots."

Michonne should have realized he had other accomplices the night she was kidnapped. Suddenly, the memory came back to her, there was a voice that had called to her. _A voice she knew._ It had distracted her and slowed her down as she tried to leave Maggie's. She recognized who it was now.

"Aarav?" She said suddenly naming another senior member of the Protection Coordination Unit. The one with the pretty wife and brand new baby. One she would have sworn was a friend.

"Another idiot," Shane sighed heavily before adding, "Not you, him. I told that asshole to leave you to Negan's men. So if you know about him then obviously he didn't listen. I guess my grandmother was right… the only good accomplice is a dead one."

It disgusted Michonne that she shared so many personal parallels with Shane, only children, raised by their grandmothers. It occurred to her that maybe that was why they'd always been like oil and water. Perhaps they were ultimately too similar. Although it must be said, though her grandmother was also filled with platitudes to live by, _M'dear had never given her one like that_.

"Doesn't matter now anyway," Shane pronounced ominously. "His role always had the potential to be as the patsy."

"Aarav has a newborn child."

"Everybody's got something," He responded coolly. "And hopeful he was smart with all that money and left his little girl well taken care of..."

" _Was_?" She asked, her ears ringing at his words.

"They'll find his body in the morning, if they haven't already," He said matter-of-factly, his voice a deep, deadly rumble in his throat. "I already told you, I have this under control. As long as everyone keeps their little traps shut."

There was a long silence after that, punctuated only by the nocturnal cries of animals above their heads in the trees and Michonne's own labored breathing. She struggled through the trees, over the uneven terrain, terrified. She didn't know when precisely it happened but her body had begun to tremble. She stumbled again right then and Shane pulled her roughly to her feet by her elbow.

" _Easy_ , Pretty Lady," He said in her ear slithery smooth. "We're almost there."

 _Yes, they were._

Michonne felt as if the blood was draining from her, as she grew nearly numb with fear. She knew then that she had been a fool. She saw it all clearly now. Shane was a cold-blooded killer and she'd allowed him to lure her out into the darkness with the promise of escape. _Away from the place where she'd been under Ngangabouka and Oné's protection._ And for as little confidence as that idea had previously given her, Michonne was now certain she had been far safer then than she was in this moment with Shane.

Finally, Michonne slipped her hand into her bra and palmed the sharpened bone, quickly secreting it behind her back as she turned to him again."You forgot something."

"Oh yeah?" He asked. "What?"

The beam of his light hit her in the midsection, before traveling slowly up to her face. She could tell Shane didn't realize as the trees thinned and more light penetrated through them, she could actually make out his other hand wrapped around the gun held at his side.

"Maggie," Michonne answered simply. She shielded her eyes but took a step toward him closing the small gap between them. "She won't be an accessory to this and you can't make her."

"A wife can't be compelled to testify against her husband," Shane said, proving yet again that he really had thought a lot of this through. "But that doesn't matter because Maggie is never going to know…"

Shane had manipulated everyone, Michonne realized. The potential threat to Carl and Lori assured Rick's silence. He had managed to insulate himself from his co-conspirators in USAfriCOM using Aarav as a go-between and a fall guy. And then he'd seen to it that Aarav was no longer a potential liability. Shane was absolutely right, he had left every contingency covered— except her. Just the fact that she was still alive remained a problem for him. He had nothing on her and thusly she remained an unknown quantity...a loose end to be tied up.

Michonne looked around quickly. She could make out the break in the trees ahead that delineated the approaching clearing. They were almost at the pasture. One small light revealed the horse paddock ahead. Faintly Michonne could hear the horses nickering as they relaxed in the moonlight. Even more softly, and much closer, she could also hear the soft slow click as Shane pulled the hammer back on his gun.

At long last, the moment she'd known was coming was here. Michonne watched stoically as Shane raised the gun from his side toward her. She gripped the bone in her closed fist.

"I made sure—"

Just then, a single gunshot rang out, cutting through the silence. Shane looked away startled by the noise. Michonne took his moment of distraction to lunge at him. The gun went off a hairsbreadth away from her midsection as she buried her small but sharp bone-shiv just below his clavicle in the meaty flesh of his shoulder.

"ARGH! YOU FUCKIN' BITCH!" He cried out in pain and reached for her as Michonne sprung away from him and disappeared into the darkness.

This was her one and only chance at escape, she knew it.

 _She had to make it work_.

* * *

Location Unknown ( _Approximately 45 km outside Nord Kivu, DRC_ )

Despite a relatively detailed map created by one of Ezekiel's Trippies who had grown up in the area and the directions from Nyokato, they were still wandering around the bush blindly well after midnight. The foothills surrounding North Kivu were lush with rainforest flora and alive with nocturnal fauna. In it, the night came in pitch black but relatively noisily. Luckily, that allowed twenty-five people to bungle about the forest unobserved. And the tree cover, completely occluding any light coming from the moon or sky, gave them an additional, if problematic, element of stealth. The only light available came from twenty-five separate flashlights that bobbed up and down like small, disembodied specters in the night.

Ideally, Rick would have preferred night-vision goggles that would have afforded them an extra element of surprise, but ironically that was outside the realm of possibility. That kind of tech was far more than even the Trippies' fairly well-funded operation could afford. When he'd heard that, Rick's face burned. Because of Shane, Negan had the ability to get his hands on armaments and munitions that advantaged his men over even the government's _._

 _It was the very definition of treason._

As she had through the majority night, Maggie remained by Rick's side flanked also by Samir. Because of her presence with them, Rick had chosen a position in the rear of their complement of soldiers, instead of in the vanguard where he wished to be. He left that to Carter, who was behaving as their de facto leader anyway...leading the charge. As much as it chapped Rick's hide to see that, it was as it should be. Rick knew he needed to be where he was to protect Maggie. And technically Ezekiel had entrusted his men to the Colonel, not to Rick. _And the fact of that made them Carter's men._ But he was beyond ego now, Rick just prayed that they would return as many of these men to their families as had embarked on this trip with them.

"Maggie, when we get to the perimeter of the camp, I need you to hang back with Samir," Rick whispered just loudly enough to cross the minuscule space between them.

He couldn't see the displeasure in her face as they trudged through the foliage, careful of the large roots that jutted out of the ground at regular intervals. But as he moved a particularly low-hanging branch aside for her to pass, he could hear it in her soft sigh. He knew why she was annoyed. It was because he'd been telling her the exact same thing in different ways all night.

"Maggie, honey, I just don't want to see you get hurt. And despite whatever is going on with Shane right now, the thing I do know is that he'd feel the same way."

"Rick, I appreciate your concern but it isn't like this is the first time I've held a gun," Maggie countered shifting the rifle on her shoulder. "I know how to handle myself."

... _And that attitude was precisely what worried him._

The fact that Maggie had a gun at all was a point of irritation for Rick. It had been his experience throughout his life in Law Enforcement that gun possession tended to embolden people, make them feel invincible. So whereas he had no fundamental problem with civilians being armed, he found that when they were, they got themselves in more trouble more often. They even got dead more often. He didn't want Maggie to be yet another one.

"I know you can. I've been out with you and your dad. But that rifle you have right now is not for hunting and you'll be shooting a person, not a deer or some coyote harassing your livestock."

Maggie was silent for a moment, before grousing, "I don't know what Daddy is so godawful concerned about. Between you and Michonne, it's like I never left Buckhead at all."

She sighed loudly in exasperation and went silent again. Rick smirked to himself.

"We just wanna keep you safe," He said softly into the darkness.

"I understand but I'm not a child... And just so you know, I _have_ shot a person before."

Rick could hear the shade of mischievous glee in her voice as she revealed that tantalizing bit of personal history, knowing Rick would bite.

"Well, you can't drop that kind of bomb and then not follow up," He whispered after an extended silence where all they could hear is the light crunching of the shrubbery as they moved past it.

"I can't, can I?" She chuckled low in her throat.

"Nope," Samir said speaking up from the other side of her. It was the first thing he'd said in a while. So much so that both Rick and Maggie could have sworn he wasn't listening. In fact, it was the first thing he'd done that announced his presence near them at all.

Rick smiled to himself yet again. This was neither the time nor the place but Rick felt immense gratitude in that moment to know all the people he did. The Mission was made up of a good group of people...his people. Some of the best he'd ever known _...and Shane was attempting to ruin everything_. His anger surged suddenly.

"It was buckshot in his ass really—" She started before one quick, sharp whistle rang out in the night.

It was so fast that it wouldn't have been easily distinguished as an animal or human call, but it had been the signal all present were waiting on. They were almost there...or at least the scouts sent out ahead thought they were. Instantly, the flashlights went out replaced by far dimmer red lights. The more expensive night-vision compliant flashlights, supplied by Carter from the AfriCOM coffers, provided larger low-light, red beams but had to be shared by groups of five. Luckily, Rick and Samir had been allotted their own.

A young soldier appeared out of the brush with a small hikers' headlamp covered in translucent red tape on his head. The rustle and his sudden appearance at her side frightened Maggie giving lie to much of her recent bravado. Rick and Samir left the rifles at their sides unperturbed by the young man because he'd announced himself already, with enough rustling to be a small elephant, before he'd finally appeared in front of them.

"Captain?" The young Trippie queried urgently but quietly. "The Colonel asks you to come to the front."

Rick nodded then turned to Samir shining his flashlight under his own chin so his face was illuminated. He looked like he was about to tell a campfire tale and their respective eyes widened as if he was. Rick just wanted to make sure they both saw his expression as he spoke.

"Lieutenant Padukone, you have one responsibility and she is standing next to you—"

"Seriously Rick?" Maggie objected. "Isn't this a bit much?"

"—Do we understand each other?" Rick continued undeterred.

"Yes Sir," Samir responded somberly in a tone that appropriately recognized the gravity of the charge he'd been given.

"Ms. Greene, the Lieutenant is responsible for your security in my absence. That means when he gives you an instruction, it is for your protection and his own. To ensure the safety of you both all I ask is that you comply."

Rick spoke formally giving Maggie the same spiel he'd given her on her first assignment, her first-day in-country, the same one he'd given Michonne on hers too. It was pretty much the same one he'd given every single person under his charge in the past ten years. But it was _that_ important. And because Maggie was a smart girl, it only took her one long moment before she understood what Rick was doing.

Even in the poor light provided, Rick could see Maggie rolling her eyes before she nodded. She quickly tacked on a "yes" to her response when she saw Rick didn't plan to move until he heard it. Rick briefly squeezed one of her small hands in between his before letting go and heading forward behind the soldier. He knew she didn't like it, found his protection infantilizing. But, at this point, Rick was certain that if he'd only been a little more like this with Michonne, this whole circumstance could have been avoided.

Rick's first impression of Negan's compound was a begrudging awe. He hated to admit it but it was impressive...ingenious maybe even. Not because of its size —it was relatively, _surprisingly_ small— or its appearance, there wasn't anything to see yet— but because of the very fact that _there was nothing to see_. Because it was hard to judge anything about it even while standing directly outside of it; it was virtually invisible. Maybe a little more than thirty klicks from one major urban area and twenty from another across the massive Lake Kivu, Negan was hiding in plain sight. Although technically, hidden as it was among dense jungle where even very little light escaped, "plain-sight" was a bit of a misnomer, and yet it still couldn't be called "easily discoverable". Negan's men wouldn't have had to travel even twenty miles to engage with Ezekiel's stationed less than 50 miles away but interestingly Rick had never heard of any skirmishes in this particular area.

 _No wonder. It would have been foolish to inadvertently give up such a good position._

Rick followed the young soldier who'd come to get him through a small group of three or four men. Carter's man Barnes stood close by but looked off into the darkness with his gun at the ready. When Rick made it through them, he saw they had been huddled around Carter who was kneeled in front of two men. One sat on the ground looking, in the dim light provided by the few flashlights, a bit shell-shocked while the other lay sprawled across the dirt, for all appearances either unconscious or dead.

So that was the first question Rick asked as he reached the Colonel. "He alive?"

Carter looked up at him grimly.

"Just barely." Carter took his hand off the shoulder of the man sitting cross-legged and stunned in the dirt and placed it on his own thigh, frustrated. "The fence is electrified. The guys went around it twice before he tried to scale it. Didn't suspect a thing 'til he touched it."

Rick looked up and shone a light on the roughly nine-foot leafy barrier that had effectively sprung up in front of them. There had been no warning it was coming before they came upon it. He looked around briefly. There was barely a clearing, maybe twenty feet of high grass between the treeline and a wall camouflaged in dying shrubbery and green tarpaulin. It would have been easy to have walked right past it even a few yards away from the walls on either side, in the dense forest.

"Electric fencing? Out here?" Rick asked squatting so the two men were face to face. "You okay?"

The soldier nodded still clearly dazed. Rick checked the man on the ground's pulse. It was slow but steady and he breathed shallowly, to Rick's relief.

"No sentries?" Rick asked looking around again. The question was a little redundant but he was a bit surprised by this development. If their general bumbling around in the dark hadn't alerted someone, then this man's near-electrocution should have. But it was obvious, they were the only things moving in the vicinity.

 _Something was off._

"Christoph says only three guards and only in the front. They didn't walk the whole perimeter because of the guards, they just kept doubling back. Said there's a gated field in the back with a pasture. No one there either. We're coming along the Eastern-side wall. So I guess Negan figures with this shit, he doesn't need more guards," Carter offered looking at the wall with a shrug.

"He must have a generator," Barnes added.

That didn't make sense to Rick. Negan was public enemy number one in this country. _How could he possibly believe he could make do with only an electric fence and three patrolmen?_

"Which means he has a junction box somewhere." The words came from Maggie, coming up behind Rick right then.

Carter looked up in surprise while Rick stood then. "Maggie? What the hell? What am I wasting my breath? Didn't I just _ask_ you to hang back?"

"You did but _tell_ me, do you know anything about electrical fencing? Because that's what Daddy used around the bull pen on the farm. And if you can't find a way to turn this off you might as well pitch camp right out here, 'cuz you're not getting in there." Maggie pointed at the fence then crossed her arms and waited for a response.

Rick looked at Carter, who in turn looked at the young Sergeant standing across from him, who shook his head. _No, there were no electricians among their ranks today_. They all looked back at Maggie.

"Okay then," She declared as if vindicated by their ineptitude. "This isn't industrial grade electrical fencing, this is a regular fence someone electrified. To deliver the kind of shock it did, it's gotta be jerry-rigged to have this amplitude."

"Which means what?" Carter asked the question Rick was a little too irritated to ask. _Sometimes trying to protect these women was like trying to herd cats._

"Which means if we can locate the box, I can shut it off."

"You sure?"

Maggie nodded.

Rick turned back to the young man on the ground. "Christoph?"

He looked up at Rick with the wide-eyed mystification of a small child. _The voltage had to have scrambled his brains a little_ , Rick speculated.

"Christoph, have you seen anything like that? A power line, a junction box?"

The man stared at him.

"He speaks English right?" Rick looked at Carter.

"More or less."

Maggie repeated the question in French and he gave her the same expression for a moment before slowly raising his arm and pointing down the fenceline.

"They need medical attention, and we don't have the men to spare," Carter stood finally and looked at Rick. He leaned in so they could whisper even more quietly to one another.

Rick could see the question in his statement. _Did they spare men they desperately needed to get the men back to a medic?_ It should have been Carter's decision but Rick understood why he was asking. Losing four or five men to this could make no difference at all or it could be a critical mistake. Rick appreciated that Carter was even consulting with him.

"I think we have to," Rick said and Carter nodded confirming they were of the same mind.

Despite all his bullshit, in these few short hours they'd spent together —only about thirty-six at this point— Rick had come to recognize what Michonne had always seen in Carter Embry. He was a good and decent man.. _.if also annoying as fuck_. Michonne was right to trust him and Rick was fortunate that he'd had the good sense to follow her lead.

"Okay, huddle up," Carter instructed his group of Trippies in a whisper. "Gloire, I need you to round up two guys that can get them back to HQ right now, ASAP. Tell Ezekiel we found it and to send reinforcements. Then, we're splitting the group. I'm taking eight men—"

" _Twelve_ ," Rick said then. "You'll need more."

Carter looked at Rick with surprise before nodding. "— _Ten_ men are coming to the front with me to provide a distraction for Captain Grimes and Ms. Greene to deactivate this fence. I need the good climbers with me because then we're scaling the fence to open the gate."

The man named Gloire quickly translated the orders into French and two of the group took off back into the treeline to inform the others.

"When do we do this? Will there be a signal?" Samir, who'd been standing a few feet away, Rick imagined to avoid his wrath, asked then.

Rick turned to him then gesturing him closer to the group with a nod of the head. Samir came up alongside Maggie.

"We go in thirty minutes, that enough time?" Carter asked of Maggie, who nodded.

In the time it took for them to synchronize their watches, a well-ordered group had formed around them then cleaved, leaving ten men with Carter and Barnes and the remaining six with Rick, Maggie and Samir. Rick set the timer on his watch and then looked up at Carter.

"Embry, I'm gonna have to try that ginger beer you like so much when we get back," Rick said grasping Carter's hand in a firm handshake.

Carter gripped his hand, "It's good stuff. Francine loves it. Maybe we can take you and Michonne over there. Make it a foursome?"

Rick smiled wearily at the "double-date" implication, to which Carter chuckled.

"With Justin, Samir and Maggie then? Make it something like a Pop Negan-veterans' support group? You'll buy, of course, seeing as how technically, I'm the one footing the bill for all this." He waved his hand around the air vaguely while smirking.

 _He was still a dick though._

Rick just shook his head at Carter's off-color joke.

"C'mon, it's only life and death here," Carter said before nodding politely to Maggie and Samir. "Lighten up, Rick."

The very beginnings of a weary smile played at Rick's mouth as he nodded and turned finally to lead his group away.

* * *

"That's it. I bet it's that box over there." Maggie pointed through the fence to a sloppily rigged junction box attached to an old post with a single yellowing light hanging from it. A viper's pit worth of errant wiring ran the length of the wooden pole attached to a small horse paddock. "I just have to disable it."

The fencing and the gate in this back part of the compound were old and rusty but uncovered by the tarp that lined the rest of the camp. Rick could see why though. Other than a small barn in an unattended pasture with one horse and a swaybacked broodmare, there was nothing there to hide. It looked like a largely abandoned parcel. Still, anyone who tried to scale the fence to get at them would have been in for a nasty surprise. Rick had thrown a twig up against the metal gate and been forced to jump back at the large spark and pop of electricity he received in return.

"How do you plan to do that?" The barn was well within the fence line. There was no way to get to it from here. They'd arrived at a dead end. _Again_. Rick squeezed his temples in frustration. "How _the fuck_ are you gonna get in there?"

Maggie whistled lightly to catch his attention. In the darkness, it was hard to make out but she smiled and stepped forward to give Rick a quick nudge in the side to get him to look at her. When he did finally, she pointed up with one finger. Rick followed her gaze to the large tree overheard with a large bough that crossed the fence line directly into the compound. It was easily nine feet above them.

"Are you _kidding_?"

"Rick? Are you guys gonna give me a boost or what?" Maggie asked already heading toward the tree trunk. The Trippies followed her with amused glances.

When she got to the tree, she dropped her gun and water canteen on the ground at her feet. Maggie looked briefly up at the massive tree in front of her but then waited for Rick, declining the footholds the other men offered. He sighed heavily, fully aware of what she was doing. She wanted him to agree, to help, _to acquiesce_ to this.

"Fine." He relented walking up to the tree and interlacing his fingers to give her the boost. Samir did similarly and others braced them for support.

"I'll be up right behind you."

Maggie put her hand on Rick's shoulder and her foot in his palm.

"I expected nothing less." She answered smugly.

With one coordinated heave-ho, they propelled her upward onto the lowest protruding branch on the tree. She would have to do the rest alone, navigating another thick branch and then a precariously small knot that only gave her a toe-hold before she reached the bough she wanted. But she did it, while Rick held his breath and everyone else silently watched, as if she'd been climbing trees her whole life.

 _She probably had_ , He conceded.

"You good?" He asked peering up at her and following her progress with his flashlight.

"I'm good enough. Keep that thing outta my eyes," She answered with a slight strain in her voice. Maggie shuffled along on her belly dragging herself across the wide bough. Rick shifted the flashlight beam slightly while still keeping it on her.

Suddenly, a single, loud shot rang out. In the night, it was hard to triangulate but it seemed as though it came from back where they had been earlier. _It could be Carter's group._

"Rick?" Maggie said frantically pausing feet above his head and looking down. He shone the light up at her again and saw her panicked expression. Her big green eyes went wide with anxiety as a second shot, far closer to their location this time, went off.

Rick looked down at his watch. Their thirty minutes weren't up yet, which meant this was not a part of their plan. _Something or someone had fucked up._ And now, their precarious circumstances had just become real to her. Things had just instantly tumbled from bad to godawful. Rick could see that dawning comprehension written all over Maggie's face in fright and anguish.

 _Whatever element of surprise they'd had just went up in smoke._

"Don't think about it now, honey. Just get over the fence and shut it down, okay?" Rick spoke calmly to her as he looked through the fencing and saw in the far distance through the thicket of trees, lights going on one-by-one all over the compound.

Rick thought of Carter and his small band of men bearing the brunt of whatever happened next.

 _God help us all._


	60. Chapter 60

***Author's Note***

Okay, everyone. Don't be angry with me but I went back to the old format for this update. ...But somehow I don't think you'll mind that much. ;-)

* * *

 _8/1/15 19:05 GMT_

 _WHO Laboratory - Deptford, Aberdeenshire, Scotland_

"I need you to not move for me," Ruth said from behind the glass.

Rick lay back in an MRI machine as he had been for the last fifteen minutes trying not to fidget in the claustrophobically small space.

"I fractured my humerus, we already know this from the x-ray. Tell me why am I doing an MRI now?" Rick called over the loud clicking of the machine. Despite his fundamental objection, he held as still as possible as the bed slid into the noisy machine.

He heard the microphone click back on. "According to Carol, you've wacked your head pretty solidly at least twice this week that she knows of. We just want to make sure everything is still okay up there. No subdural hematomas lurking about."

Rick sighed heavily but didn't object further.

"So you left your people in Rwanda?"

"Yes," He said simply, not liking the silent judgment in her statement.

There was a prolonged silence.

"Captain, you are a maze of broken bones," Ruth pronounced after a while with a combination of astonishment and concern.

"Hazard of the job."

"Well, I count twelve. Most of them have set properly, however."

Rick craned his neck to look at the doctor through the small gap between his body and the machine.

"I said, DO NOT MOVE!" She pressed the intercom and spoke sternly into her mic, which echoed loudly in the small chamber that surrounded him. Rick dropped his head quickly.

"Sorry."

"The longer it takes you to settle, the longer we'll be here." She chided.

"How long?" Rick asked trying to control his impatience.

"The full imaging takes 45 minutes if you will just hold still," Ruth said.

"Forty-five minutes!" Rick exhaled heavily.

"Stop moving and I promise you it will be fine," She coaxed. "You're halfway there already. Besides, where are you going?"

 _He considered that._

It was true, he wasn't going anywhere. If there was anything that Rick and his companions had learned in the past few days, it was that breathing over the doctor's shoulders wasn't going to make them work quicker. And even if they could, cells split at the rate that they split and cultures propagated at their own rate as well. There would be no rushing the science of all this...no matter how much he willed them to work faster. Right now in the middle of the day he had nothing better to do, truly, that to submit to Dr. O'Hare's check-up. Rick didn't even know when he'd had his last full work-up. He knew he was going to have had to get one as one of the terms of the new position but in the end, they hadn't gotten that far.

 _Better late than never_ , he supposed, falling into a contemplative silence.

"Fancy a tuna bap when you get out of that contraption, Captain?" A voice came over the speaker in the machine a while later.

 _It was Dr. Capaldi._

Rick could recognize him from his distinctive, thick Glaswegian accent. "We have an obscene number of tins in the larder. Something of the order of seventy. Bloody procurement officer was part porpoise apparently."

Rick snorted.

"What's a bap?" He asked then.

"A sandwich, Rick," Ruth clarified.

"No, thank you."

"Captain, when was the last time you ate?" Cappy asked. "We think you should join us for some food. You can't subsist on air and crisps alone."

Rick sighed.

It had been days since he had a real meal, that was also true. Instead, he was making due with primarily the stuff Glenn had put in his backpack days ago. He didn't know why eating with their group somehow felt treasonous to Rick, but it did. He felt as if he was giving up on Michonne and the group by allowing himself any rest, any leisure, for even a moment. Since he'd been there, he'd walked every square foot of the facility. He'd gone down every hall, opened every office, inspected every room and stairwell and made a point of meeting every doctor, researcher, and administrator who was still in the building. His excuse was that since they'd lost their security personnel and he was a senior UN security officer, it was actually his responsibility to ensure their safety. He already planned in the next few days to check the other buildings on the property. But he knew it was all busy-work, _he was haunted_. He refused to sleep and rejected hunger as weakness.

Just the day before, against the advice of Dr. Jones, he'd led Carol, Daryl and a brave doctor named Reynolds off the compound to scavenge for more food in the local shopping center. As they all suspected it would be, it was largely picked clean but they had found a few boxes of things in the back storage area after disposing of an infected stockboy and cashier. But it had all been a distraction, meant to keep his mind off both what was happening in Rwanda and what might be happening with his kids. He spoke with Hershel every day to get updates on their refugee camp and that helped calm him somewhat, helped him to focus but it still wasn't enough. It occurred to him suddenly then, maybe it was for the best that he was trapped inside that MRI machine. Maybe for once, he was forced to be still. If not for it, he doubted he would have been able to sit still otherwise.

"I guess I could eat," He relented finally, hearing Michonne's voice in his head.

"There's a man," Cappy said clearly relieved.

Rick was under no illusion that the staff wasn't watching him. As an armed and potentially dangerous person in a building full of fairly harmless scientists, it was prudent of them to be mindful of his emotional well-being. Rick actually chuckled at the thought, _they were afraid he'd go berserk._

"We have our tea in the conference room on two. There's a DVD player in there and we can watch a little telly. Nigel in accounting used to keep a virtual library in his desk that we've inherited."

"All done," Ruth said then as if relieved. Rick felt himself sliding out from inside the deafening machine as the loud banging ceased finally.

He sat up when his head cleared the opening and swung his legs over the side.

"Stay there and I'll come remove your IV," Dr. O'Hare said into the mic as Rick watched them both sitting together in the adjacent room.

He couldn't hear their exchange but saw as Cappy nudged her as she rose to come into the room. He was teasing her, saying something to her that she was clearly unhappy with as she moved away from him.

"Am I cleared?" Rick asked as Ruth opened the door separating them and came in.

"Yes, you have a remarkably hard head," She said smiling as she took his arm and began removing the IV line.

"Funny how your expert medical opinion is exactly the same as what my dad used to say," Rick smirked.

"Oh, my mum as well. I suppose it's only hard heads left now," She joked.

"Tell us, do you watch television, Captain?" Cappy said then into the intercom. "Do you have a favorite program?"

Ruth looked up at him and then frowned at Cappy while he shrugged innocently in the other room. Rick smiled at Ruth, still unsure what this had to with anything.

"As a kid, I liked _Miami Vice_ , I guess."

"Ahh, the old sock-less wonders Crockett and Tubbs. Good choice for a lawman," Cappy teased in a bad southern accent before continuing. "What about you, Ruthie?"

"I liked _The Avengers_ ," She said with a thin smile. "Not your Captain America—"

"Oh I know, Emma Peele, Mr. Steed, I've seen the reruns," Rick said as she put the band-aid on his arm and had him put it up to his chest.

Her soft brown eyes lit up at his recognition.

"What's this then? An American with actual taste?" Cappy pronounced from the booth, to which they all chuckled.

Ruth looked down shyly then and Rick finally figured out what was happening.

"B-but, I'm actually not much of a tv watcher anymore. I prefer books."

"Oh?" Ruth said brightening even more, her smile widening.

That was the opposite reaction to what Rick hoped for but he didn't know what he expected. _She was a doctor after all, she had to enjoy reading books._

"I'm more partial to military history and biographies. I like the biographies of kings, presidents, generals, primarily," He told her truthfully. "But my girlfriend has made me expand my interests a bit."

"Is that so?" Cappy said sounding as disappointed as if he was the one Rick let down easy.

Ruth nodded and smiled wanly, understanding what he was saying.

"Because of her, I've read a little Modern American like Baldwin and Richard Wright." He explained, "Only to keep up with her."

That was also true... _kinda_. Years ago, Michonne had lent him a copy of _Native Son_ and it had intrigued him enough to try other of her suggestions. Although he had had to admit to her later that he couldn't make heads or tails of Toni Morrison, he'd mostly enjoyed it. He didn't think it would be helpful to mention that, though. As well as the fact that Michonne only became is girlfriend four days ago.

Ruth looked at him, "We have a library here. It's mostly of a scientific nature but some people have left their books in there. I think I saw something by James Joyce in there a few weeks back."

"And she's still with us, is she?" Cappy asked, less than artfully. Ruth shot him a look that Rick would have had to be blind to have missed.

"Yeah, I left her in Rwanda, with the rest of my team."

"...Ahh, and that's why it's so important for you to get back there," Ruth said as realization dawned on her.

Something about the way she said it made Rick feel suddenly sheepish and guilty all at once. _It was for more than just for Michonne, wasn't it?_

Rick nodded once anyway as he eased off the flatbed and followed Ruth into the other room.

 _These days couldn't go by fast enough for him..._

* * *

 _8/4/2015_ _00:13 GMT_

"Tell me, is it insane to be hopeful? What they're talking about is not a cure," Rick asked this genuinely even though the answer seemed simple enough for him: _yes_.

"It's not a cure. It's camouflage..." Michonne said as if still digesting the information even as she was saying it, which, in essence, she was. "It's just camouflage."

Rick and Michonne sat staring at each other in the wee hours of the night. It was the only time that there was any of the limited bandwidth free to do this. They hadn't thought it would work, Skyping each other over the secure server that was meant only for the scientists' steady stream of highly classified emails to move back and forth. According to Glenn, it was VOIP running a tunneling protocol. _Whatever that was_. But indeed whatever it was, it was Rick and Michonne's very own miracle. It had allowed Rick to receive regular video calls from the Karengera outpost to the WHO facility in Scotland. Calls that quite honestly had become a lifeline for both him and Michonne. Rick hadn't known it was possible to feel as relieved as he did when her face materialized on the monitor every night thanks to Glenn's ingenuity and relentless.

But that reveal was only the biggest in a series of revelations over the past week they'd been apart. Rick had warmed to his new companions reluctantly. And in doing so discovered that Moritz would gamble on anything, including the speed of weevils they found in the older boxes of cereal. Ruth possessed a lovely singing voice and a deep love of old American R&B girl-groups. Morgan meanwhile, Rick found out, liked peanut butter granola bars and hoarded a stash of them in his office. But Cappy was the most fun, a loud, foul-mouthed science-fiction and horror nerd. Michonne, meanwhile, had been privileged to find out a host of new things about the new people she called "family": Sasha, it turned out, was a huge Trekkie and superhero cosplayer; Rosita had been a silent partner in a chain of strip clubs, including one she formerly bartended at as a teen. And most advantageously, not only was Glenn a former pizza-delivery boy but he'd also put in time as a low-level member of the hacktivist group Anonymous —that is, before the FBI and a federal judge mandated that he become a Marine.

All information which Rick and Michonne shared with each other nightly when they both commandeered office space for their own purposes. Rick took over the small office adjacent to the video-conference room that according to Morgan, had been their IT guru's before he simply walked off the WHO compound a few days ago never to be seen again. Meanwhile, Michonne sat in a small nurses' office on the same floor and down the hall from her and Sasha's old hospital rooms. It wasn't what they'd hoped for —which was to be back together again. Still, it was something, a tether to what they knew, as the rest of the world became increasingly unrecognizable. And it was all thanks to PFC Glenn Rhee...

To date, it had been a frustrating week spent treading water as the scientists worked furiously trying to unlock the mystery inscribed onto Milton's body, trapped in his DNA, cells, and tissues. To Rick, the wait had been interminable but bearable only because of these late night conversations with Michonne. They were its only bright spot. It provided time they honestly hadn't had since they fell back into each other's orbits. The calls had allowed them to reconnect on the most basic level, catching up on all the things in their respective lives they'd missed in the four years they'd been out of touch. _And it allowed him to sleep at night._

Despite what they maybe should have been talking about or what people thought they were talking about on these nightly calls, the vast majority of the time they were allotted was not spent hashing over the mission. It was silly time, time spent chatting and reminiscing and openly wishing they were together. Given the enormity of what they were tasked with, given what Rick was waiting for, given where Michonne found herself trapped, it was time they could have spent better, _they both knew it_. But this, doing it the way they were, was what was keeping them both sane. This allotted hour each night was their time and they used it as they wanted. Still, some business always inevitably ended up being attended to anyway.

"If it works, it will make us all infected, but theoretically just infected by a non-lethal strain," He said still skeptical of the whole notion.

"Yes, and we'll need boosters, but you need boosters for tetanus and measles too."

"But skipping your tetanus or measles booster won't turn you into a ravenous undead monster," Rick rebutted, only sort of joking.

"Okay, yes. What can I say?" Michonne conceded, leaning back in her chair and taking a small sip from a cup she'd told him held red wine. They'd decided to make these conversations like visits, debriefs, where they sat and drank together as they had in their old UN days.

"You don't have to say anything. You don't have to sell me on this. I know we need it. Whatever it ends up being. If it means we live, then we win. But right now, we don't even know if what they're planning will really even work." The truth was honestly that Rick was just impatient with the whole process. Intellectually, he knew better than to expect a life-changing vaccination like this one to be formulated overnight but he wanted, no, _needed_ to get back to his family.

"If Milton remains stable, it will."

"That's a big time 'if', 'Chonne. They said at this point, they don't even know that he won't have cognitive impairments when he wakes up. And that's _if_ he wakes up at all. They said, normally, they'd have placed him in a medically-induced coma to protect his brain. But his body kind of just did it for them, so who knows now."

"Our bodies are the most complex and impressive machines known to man. Don't discount what it can do with or without our help," Michonne answered soothingly.

Rick took a deep breath trying to locate his patience. Talking to Michonne helped him in that effort. Sometimes she reminded him of the doctors, with how awed she was by the science of it all and how she followed the scientists' progress eagerly and could talk at length about the implications of their results. The doctors used the majority of their internet bandwidth in brief video conferences and exchanging lengthy data-heavy email-chains daily and most of each night. Then Michonne would have happily spent the little hour they were allotted in the middle of the night putting it all in layman's terms for him if he wanted that. But Rick just wanted a thumbs up or thumbs down and a vial of something viable to take back to Negan... _yesterday_.

"Trust the process, Chicken Little," She said smirking at him from the computer screen.

Rick arched an eyebrow questioningly, " _Chicken Little_ , really? This is no acorn, Love. The sky really is falling."

Because of the large, high definition monitor in front of him, even with the distracting pixelation of a lower resolution connection, Rick could see all the delicate permutations of Michonne's expression as she spoke and listened. Usually, it delighted him, but now he saw how her own eyebrows rose slightly in surprise. And how her coffee mug of wine froze for a moment on its way to her mouth. It took him a second before he realized why.

"You don't like it?"

Rick watched as her face became suddenly unreadable. Michonne gently placed her cup on the desk off to her side. Then she eased forward on her elbows, moving them onto the desk gingerly, mindful of her injury and sore side. She propped her head up on one hand, her face filling the screen. He didn't think she realized it but her fingers, as they frequently did, worried the engagement ring that hung like a pendant from her necklace. His heart galloped in fear of what she was about to say. She was clearly ruminating on something.

"It's not that I don't like it. It was just a surprise. That's all," She said seriously, carefully.

Rick couldn't hide his disappointment at her reaction, not that he'd said it for her reaction. Honestly, it had just slipped out. _Already too many days spent with these damn Brits._ He didn't know how to say that though.

After a moment of mutual silence, Michonne spoke again. Her voice then was uncharacteristic in its hesitancy, "Not that it's a competition, or comparison or anything but have you called anyone else that before?"

"No. Never," He answered quickly and easily.

 _It wasn't a lie._

Lori had been 'Hon' or 'Honey' to his 'Babe' and few girlfriends before her had merited any term of endearment at all. Still, he wasn't sure what came over him in that moment. It came to his mouth and he'd just said it. It was that simple. And anyway, that was exactly who Michonne was...his love.

"Is that okay?" He asked with uncertainty. It was strange to feel set back on his heels again. He loved her, she loved him, it was all out in the open now. He didn't understand why she suddenly seemed put off by his expression of it.

"I'm not upset," She said almost as if she'd heard his unasked question. "I was just caught off-guard. It's fine, in fact, I like it."

The smile returned to her face and a feeling, a hazy sort of warmth, spread through his chest as it always did. It was a pride for him that she seemed to save those smiles, her most glorious ones he thought, just for him. He'd seen her smile at hundreds of people in their long acquaintance, but this one, where the apples of her cheeks glowed as she cocked her head slightly to the side and looked down briefly before looking back up at him through her lashes bashfully, was all his. He smiled back and there was another long silence.

"I-is there something you want me to call you?" She asked emboldened, but still like she was a bit embarrassed by the awkwardness of the question.

Rick shook his head while teasing her, "Besides Chicken Little?"

Michonne giggled. _An honest-to-God giggle._ Other than one time at four in the morning while she was drunk in this little dive bar in Jakarta, Rick didn't think he had ever seen her do that. He wondered if she wasn't a little drunk now, he wondered if he wasn't too.

"Yes, _Dear,"_ She smiled again teasingly and Rick knew in that instant he could dedicate the rest of his life to just that. Just making her happy, making her giggle stupidly in the wee hours of the morning and giving her a reason to smile. It could be his life's work and he could be content.

"Definitely not that, you're not my mother and God help me, I hope I'm not my father," He deadpanned, but the thought gave him a genuine chill.

"Well?" She prompted after an extended silence he spent just looking at her.

He pondered it, his turn to hesitate before speaking.

"I've always...well, I like the way you call me, 'Captain'," Rick admitted softly. He knew if his cheeks weren't already red from the full glass of scotch he'd poured himself while sitting and talking with her, this confession would do the trick.

" _Really_?" She said it quietly, both intrigued and surprised. Another naughtier smile played at her lips. "Captain, huh?"

He nodded feeling an ache in both his pride and his loins from finally admitting that out loud. He was painfully aware of how pompous that sounded, but it was the truth. And it had nothing to do with his rank or his military service either. He wouldn't even be mentioning it, in all honesty, if it wasn't for the fact that whenever he heard it, if she whispered it into his ear as they negotiated with some village elder or exclaimed it to catch his attention during an emergency, it hadn't very nearly always made him hard. It brought out a protective, damn near possessive streak in him that had almost nothing to do with the job and everything to do with her.

 _Not that she needed to know all that._

" _Captain_ ," She said it again, testing it like a new word in her lexicon, clearly teasing him with a faux-seductive tone. "Way to dirty up a perfectly innocent word."

Rick cleared his throat, "Is he still being on his best behavior?" He asked deliberately and abruptly changing the subject.

Michonne sobered quickly sitting up from where she'd leaned over the desk before. "We're still his 'honored guests'," Michonne made air-quotes with her fingers while rolling her eyes.

"Friendly, accommodating, informative— He's allowed me to sit in on every meeting with Dr. Lerner. Claims it's because we're the leaders of the three groups in the facility."

Rick was loath to admit it but Negan was right, even if her group only consisted of four people at the moment, Michonne was and would always be a leader.

"Doesn't sound like the guy you described to me all those years ago. You think the years mellowed him?"

"No, I think the end of the world did. But I still..." She trailed off leaving him to finish the sentence himself.

Rick agreed quietly, "I know, I wouldn't either. Not _any_ of them."

He paused. He didn't want to say too much. Just because Negan was behaving reasonably now did not mean he might not be eavesdropping on their conversations or in some other way monitoring and attempting to cross them. Rick expected it, just like he knew Michonne did as well. They were both waiting for it, in fact. Strangely though, something in his gut also didn't trust Dr. Lerner. Her people might be good but he was almost certain she wasn't.

Rick checked his watch, then. Their designated hour was nearly up. It was time to relinquish the connection to the scientists once again. And he hated leaving them on a sour note...anything concerning Negan always constituted a "sour note". These nightly conversations were all he had to help him through the monotony and uncertainty of the following day until they spoke again. He didn't want it to end this way. He struggled to find a way to recapture the light mood they'd had earlier.

"Do you know when I knew?" He prompted Michonne. The look on her face told him she knew what he was doing but she played along anyway.

"When you knew what?"

"When I knew I loved you."

Michonne shook her head. There was that slight surprise in her eyes again and something twitching at her mouth. He could see it clearly because she didn't have the cup in front of her face this time.

"Remember when Maggie came to the DRC?"

Michonne frowned briefly. Rick knew she liked talking about Maggie about as much as he enjoyed bringing up Shane but he was going somewhere with this. She tried to stick with him as if she could tell but he could see the struggle on her face.

"We came to pick her up in Brazzaville and you had us all over to your house for dinner that night. Do you remember?"

"Yes Rick, I remember," She said, her face still saying she was waiting for him to get to his point.

 _Really how could either of them have forgotten? It was the beginning of the end._

"Do you remember afterward, in the kitchen? ...I just looked at you and knew. I think we both knew but you were distracted. You were upset about something, I don't remember what exactly but all _I_ could think about was how much I wanted to kiss it better. To kiss you."

Michonne laughed then, a light lilting one that released a little of the tension of the moments before.

" _Actually_ , I do remember that. But I don't quite remember it that way. I believe there was a second in my kitchen when you could have done something. Yet I seem to recall you were a perfect gentleman as always. …Even if I may not actually have wanted you to be."

"Oh really?" Rick pricked up with interest. "You mean I should have made my move?"

"Yeah, but I think the only move you ended up making was on my dishes."

"Well, you can't move without a green light," He added suggestively wiggling an eyebrow.

"Idiot," Michonne chuckled. "I seem to remember you got the green light and chose to pass."

" _Oh No_ , it did not happen like that," Rick stopped the little mating-shimmy he was doing with his shoulders to get her to laugh and shook his head emphatically.

"Oh no?" She said with faux-innocence.

"Nope."

"It didn't? I _think_ it did," Michonne teased him again, leaning back and taking another sip from her mug.

"And I _know_ you're wrong."

Given how important he knew it was to the both of them that their relationship was above reproach during his marriage, Rick knew this was all largely nonsense but he was enjoying the banter...and maybe it was also a little more true for him than he'd normally have admitted.

"Then enlighten me," Michonne raised a questioning eyebrow at him.

"As I recall it, I cornered you by the sink and you were like this jumpy little doe. All meek and wide-eyed which only made me want you more, even with people right there in the other room," Rick admitted, feeling the same tightness in his groin now describing the scene that he remembered feeling that night. "But in the end, you just gave me some dessert and sent me on my way."

"Oh, maybe you're right," She conceded with a naughty smile.

"…And it was not the type of dessert I wanted that night, by the way."

He was being arch, but it had the desired effect. Michonne burst out laughing, nearly doing a spit take with her mouthful of wine.

"Rick, I have never been 'meek and doe-eyed' a day in my life! I did not—"

Suddenly, the screen darkened significantly. Rick watched as Michonne looked up and around in alarm. The whole room turned a dark red as if the auxiliary lights had been activated. Dim bluish strobe-like lights flashed and rolled around the room like the lights from a disco ball. A piercingly-loud siren sounded that drowned out the words when she turned back toward the computer's camera to speak to him.

"Michonne, can you hear me?" Rick spoke up leaning forward himself as if it might help her. "Michonne?"

She leaned forward herself and tried to speak but it was a futile effort. The only sound coming out of his speakers was the incessant wail of the alarm. She motioned with her hands but the dim red pall that fell over everything combined with the blue flashing lights in her space made it difficult to make out. Rick stomach lurched. _He was over five thousand miles away._ He was powerless to help. He sat there as she moved away from the screen.

A moment later, a writing pad appeared in the frame. ' _Might be a false alarm. Going to check,'_ he read.

He scrambled to find his own piece of paper on the desk to respond.

' _Find some way to arm yourself. Be careful_.' Rick scribbled on a sheet and put it in front of his screen.

Michonne read the note and nodded before stepping back into the darkness that surrounded her and taking a whole chunk of his heart with her.


	61. Chapter 61

*** Author's Note***

Okay folks, Moment of truth time!

As you read, please bear in mind yet again that some of this stuff is brand spanking new, off the old cabaza and thus not well-edited. In which case, if you see typos, grammatical faux-pas, narrative leaps of logic, please understand that in subsequent readings (should you choose to do that) they will most likely have been corrected. I am a tinkerer (as I've said) and this will get a lot of tinkering in the next few days before I'm content with it. Nothing will substantially change but any glaring errors will probably be fixed. As always thanks for reading. Hit me up with your thoughts, questions, concerns.

Til the next update...lata.

May 11th 2011

Location Unknown (Approximately 45 km outside Nord Kivu, DRC)

Michonne tripped over yet another root as she ran but stopped, lying low in the underbrush as Shane's flashlight beam swung around, sweeping the area.

"Where you gonna go, bitch?" He called out to her from his distance. He wasn't shouting but under the canopy his voice carried. "Huh?"

Michonne put her hand over her mouth to prevent any sound from escaping as the beam of light swept over her position again.

"I lied. There's no way out that way. You can try it though. Be my guest, just try getting over that fence," He said in a mocking tone.

Michonne guessed what he was saying was that the back gate was electrified like everything else. He was right, she realized. There was no escape for her that way. But making a break for it back toward the buildings meant trying to get past him. She got up on her hands and knees and slowly crawled parallel to him. Instead of trying to get out, she would move across and around, maybe try to circumvent him altogether.

"Come on out, 'Chonne," Shane coaxed in an almost honeyed voice. "I promised I'll make it qu—"

The sound of more gunfire exploded from where they had come from. And it didn't stop like the last time. It was an extended firefight. Michonne cringed in fear. Something was happening in-camp. It sounded like a war had broken out as Michonne crawled quietly through the leafy foliage to the base of a tree and then slowly stood up behind it. More and more lights came on all over the camp. It wouldn't be long, likely, before someone came to her room looking for her. Shane had to realize that too.

 _There was a ticking clock on both of them now_. He needed to find her or she needed to escape before anyone realized either of them were gone. Otherwise, there would be hell to pay with Ngangabouka.

Michonne peeked out from behind the tree then and could just barely make out Shane's silhouette looking back toward the camp. She dipped back behind the tree just as he turned around again, putting her back to the trunk and holding her breath.

He was deciding what to do. Deciding whether he needed to find her as badly as he needed to know what was going on and be seen finding out back in camp with everyone else.

Michonne looked toward the back pasture again. _There was nothing there for her._ He'd already told her so...but maybe that was a good thing. She should be trying to get back to the camp, back to the protection of Oné, back to her guard dog, François. Right now, it was her safest bet, she knew that. But more importantly, Shane knew that too. He'd likely be expecting her to do that. He'd be waiting for her to try and get past him back to camp. So, if the back pasture was a dead end, then that was where she needed to go. At least until whatever was happening upfront died down, right? _She hadn't made a move yet and already the mind games were exhausting her._

Suddenly, she spotted movement in the back pasture as well. Michonne clamped her hands over her mouth again to stop from yelping in fright and giving away her position. A figure fell out of a tree in front of the gate, followed by another and then another. Whatever was going on it wasn't an attack, _it was_ _an_ _invasion_.

* * *

Rick moved slowly across the bough, seemingly inch by inch, and felt a sudden sympathy for snakes and worms who had no better way to get around. His clothing scraped along the bark as he made his way precariously, gradually over the fence. Maggie and one of the Trippies, Jean-Claude, had already cleared it and were in the pasture headed to the junction box. Once he'd made it over the gate, Rick swung himself off the bough and eased himself down into a dead drop straight to the ground. The impact was no picnic but he didn't break anything either.

"How's it look?" He asked after he jogged over to them. He watched as Jean-Claude knocked the box open with a stick and jumped back nervously.

Then they both jumped again startled at his voice despite the fact that they knew he was coming behind them. Rick couldn't very well blame them. The cacophony of gunfire resounding in the distance kept them all on edge. Whatever was actually happening in the front, it sounded like Carter had happened into the opening salvo of World War Three. They needed to find some way to either help them or otherwise get what they came for and go.

 _...And for Rick that meant finding Michonne._

"This wasn't set up by an electrician. This is the work of a lunatic," Maggie remarked standing as close to the wiring as she seemed to dare.

Samir fell out of the tree and in behind Rick, getting to the barn a minute later.

"Good Grief," he said when he arrived and saw what they were dealing with.

Rick nodded. He had to admit it looked worse and more dangerous up close than it had from even ten yards away. The electrical wiring ran the length of the pole, up maybe 30 feet into the air before each line then split going in a multitude of different directions. It was possible, perhaps even probable that this was the junction box for the whole camp.

"So I take it there's no circuit breaker?" Rick asked.

Maggie shot him a look. "We should be so lucky."

Another three men fell from the trees then, leaving only the last two outside of the gate waiting. From the sounds of it, it seemed as if things were reaching a fever pitch. Every minute or so, there was a new report of gunfire. Rick could make out most of the camp through the trees now as all the lights were on. In the distance, Rick could also hear shouting and some screaming, and he realized that somehow it had never occurred to him in all this time that there could be women in the camp besides Michonne. He knew that was stupid; he knew there were female Saviors as well as Negan's "wives".

"So what's the plan?" He asked trying not to rush her but acknowledging that she was only there predicated on the fact that she supposedly had a plan.

Maggie looked up at him and rolled her eyes. "Wait and see."

She dropped to one knee and swung the small pack she carried off her back. Pulling out the small first aid kit, she fished a small packet out of it.

"I don't think this is gonna be enough," She said to herself.

"Enough for what?" Rick asked anxiously. He realized suddenly that it might soon occur to the Saviors to venture back there just to secure their entire perimeter. _They were on borrowed time._

"Any of you the medic?" Maggie asked the men around them, ignoring Rick's question.

They spoke amongst themselves, shaking their heads. Jean-Claude pointed back toward the gate speaking in French.

"Get his pack for me, please?" Maggie asked, to which the young soldier ran back to the fence.

"Now I need your canteen," She said to Rick, snapping her fingers impatiently when he didn't hand it off to her fast enough.

* _You._ Give me that ridiculous pot* She spoke in French and pointed to one of the soldiers who had a cooking pot under his arm. He looked around at everyone before reluctantly handing his helmet off to Maggie, who snatched it from him.

Rick looked over at Jean-Claude in time to see someone's pack clear the gate, just barely and fall a few feet from him. He picked it up and ran back to the group.

" _Voici_ ," Jean-Claude said as Maggie snatched the satchel from him, pulling it open at the same time.

Maggie put the soldier's large sauteé pan on the ground between her knees before dropping both her and the other first-aid packs' white tablets into it. Then she opened her canteen and poured the water in. When she emptied her canteen, she did the same with Rick's as all the men stood around baffled.

"It's not quite full, I need more water," She said irritably.

"What are you doing?" Rick asked genuinely confused.

"Do you want an explanation or do you want me to do it, Rick?" Maggie said sternly, to which Rick closed his mouth gesturing for another soldier to hand over their canteen.

When the pot was finally full, Maggie stirred around the contents with her finger, while saying, "Double, double, toil and trouble. Fire burn and cauldron bubble."

Rick and Samir both smirked. "Still with the Shakespeare?"

"What?" Maggie said rising to her feet with the pot and a smile. "I can't work my magic without an incantation."

"Just tell me what the hell you're doing, kid," Rick said holding back a bigger smile. This really wasn't the time for that but he couldn't help it.

*Okay everyone, get back and turn on your headlamps* Maggie held the pot handles over hand as if she planned to pour it out. "Rick get back, if anything happens you knock me down, okay?"

"What the hell, Maggie," Rick said startled but still preparing to do what she asked.

All the men took a giant step back as they saw what she was about to do. _Except for Rick._ He wanted to be close just in case, just as she asked.

"The chloride in these water purification tablets is gonna make this water twice as conductive as it would normally be, which means I could electrocute myself just doing this, so be prepared to jump back!"

Maggie walked within a foot of the junction box and doused the entire box in her water solution. At the same time, she dropped the pot and jumped for cover. Not a moment too soon as the entire thing sparked and exploded like a giant firecracker. Rick leaped over her, covering her head and chest with his body as the whole box and pole combusted into blue flame. The other men dove for cover as the wooden electrical pole ignited, cracked and came tumbling down. The horses nearby reared up in shock and took off for the treeline in fright.

As the pole landed well away from them and across the fence line, the flame that ran the length of it ignited the tree it touched on the other side, sparking a true fire. It traveled quickly up the branches which burst into flames.

"Holy Shit!" Rick cried, easing up. As he moved, Maggie sat up too and they both looked around.

Through the trees, they saw as a half dozen other transformers exploded one after the other as if in a coordinated attack. And one after the other lights shut down all over the camp sinking the compound into true darkness until a new light appeared to cut through the darkness. _Fire._ Fires started in building after building that had a transformer attached to them. That was virtually every building on the property.

Rick turned on his night-vision flashlight as Maggie did the same. And they all looked around at each other in the dark. In spite of everything, they all sported a smile, to a man.

"Wow!" Samir said, coughing as smoke from the pole fire descended on them.

"Admit it, you're impressed," She said smiling and squinting with the full beam of Rick's flashlight in her face.

Without an alternate light source and with their special flashlights, Maggie had just given Carter and his men a real chance, a real shot at holding their own.

"Goddamn it, honey. I'm more than that! I'm scared of you," Rick said patting her on the back as he helped her to her feet. "C'mon let's go."

* * *

Michonne listened as Shane thrashed around in the dark.

"Michonne? Michonne? You can't get lost in an acre of forest. I _will_ find you." He called to her.

Michonne shivered with fear. That wasn't just scare-tactics, that was true.

She crouched behind her tree as Shane's beam swung her way again. But he was getting farther away, she could hear it in his voice and now see it in the length of the beam it cast. She just had to keep still, she told herself in an effort to calm her nerves.

In the distance, by the yellow light of the barn, she saw the tiny figures continue to fall out of the trees. _She counted six already._ She didn't understand why Shane hadn't noticed them too... _except that he was too intent on finding her._

He should be worried about who they were too, Michonne thought. _She was._ Any group of people crazy enough to try and attack one of Ngangabouka's outposts were not the sort of folks she wanted to tangle with. _Maybe they were Hector's people, back for revenge?_ Whoever they were, Michonne knew to steer clear of them. She listened again as in the distance the repeated popping of gunfire and an occasional scream punctuated the night. She bit her lip, to keep quiet and maintain control of her breathing. All she needed was for this chaos to hit a crescendo then she would abscond in the dark. She just had to wait it, _and Shane,_ out.

Keeping her back to the tree, she watched as the little people in the pasture ran back and forth from the gate to the barn. _What were they doing?_ She wondered. Just then, the pole with the yellow light by the barn exploded in tremendous sparks that, as far as Michonne was concerned, could have rivaled Centennial Park's fireworks display back home. Bright orange sparks shot straight up as the horses bolted from the barn and the pole ignited in flames that seemed to set off a chain reaction elsewhere on the compound. Michonne turned and looked around her tree to see equivalent explosions and fires breaking out all over. She slapped her hands over her mouth to stop from gasping in delight. If she wasn't fairly certain they would have killed her if they saw her, she would have run over to the men by the barn and given them each a great big kiss.

It was pitch black now except for the fires raging around. Michonne knew it was time for her to get moving. But she stopped when she heard Shane rustling in the bushes. He was still stalking her, unwilling to give up, particularly now that she had a chance to escape.

"Michonne!" Shane yelled out suddenly in frustration as if she was the one who had created the pyrotechnic display.

She froze for a moment. Triangulating the sound, she guessed he was at least thirty to forty feet away from her now. In which direction, she could no longer guess; the darkness robbing her of all her directional clues. Now that the fence was most likely down, he would want to head her off before she could get to the gate, she guessed. But seeing those soldiers there, Michonne felt less inclined to risk going that way anymore. She reached down between her legs then and felt among the undergrowth for a nice big stone. Using her rusty softball arm, she wound up quickly and pitched the rock far away from herself then headed in the opposite direction.

She could hear him moving rapidly as she eased the other way toward the buildings on fire and into chaos trying to be as stealthy as possible. One way or another she was going to get the hell out of there, even if she had to go through the literal and proverbial fire to do it.

* * *

"Michonne!"

It was distant and not incredibly loud but Rick heard it. It wasn't his imagination or wishful thinking, he knew he'd heard it. A sense of relief flooded him followed closely by foreboding. _It had to mean she was alive, but why would someone be calling to her? Where was she?_

"Did you hear that?" Maggie said then reaching out and grabbing Rick's arm in the dark as they rushed toward the trees that led down from the pasture to the rest of camp. "It sounded like Shane!"

She broke into a jog toward the treeline and Rick ran after her.

 _It did_ , but suddenly Rick wasn't sure he wanted to admit that to Maggie. She was _still_ trying to save Shane from himself. Whereas all Rick wanted to do at this point was pound him into the dirt.

"Wait, don't call out," Rick whispered urgently, grabbing her by the shoulders and putting his hand over her mouth. Questions came to him: _Why would Shane be out here? And why would he be calling to Michonne?_

"It might not be him," Rick lied.

 _But Rick knew it was him._

He was wrong for lying but he wasn't ready to give up his one element of surprise just yet. Right now, no one knew they were there...including and especially Shane. It was the only part of their plan that was still working currently and honestly, it was their best way of being of aid to Carter. If they could somehow come up behind the Saviors and get in and out with Michonne, then that could make the potential sacrifice Carter and his guys were making worthwhile. But to do that required them to remain quiet and out of sight for as long as humanly possible.

"We need to find Michonne first," Rick reminded her. "If she's here, we need to spread out and look for her without calling attention to ourselves."

"But he's looking for her too," Maggie resisted what Rick was trying to tell her. He knew they had slightly different agendas coming into this and that fundamental difference was making itself known now.

"Ask yourself why, Maggie," Rick said calmly holding her in place as it was clear she wanted to bolt. "Why would Shane be out here looking for her? Why hasn't he answered a single call from you or me today? Why is he even here, where's he been?"

Rick couldn't see her face, she didn't have a headlamp like the Trippies but he felt when Maggie deflated. He felt her shoulders sag as the reality she'd been resisting for the past 36 hours finally sank in.

"He wouldn't hurt her, Rick."

"The Shane we thought we knew wouldn't," Rick concurred. "This guy? I don't know what he'd do and I've known him my whole, entire life."

He pulled Maggie to his shoulder and she hung her head there for a moment and sighed deeply.

Samir pulled his red flashlight up and pointed it at them. He didn't say any words but it was clear from his expression that he wanted Rick to get the group moving again. Rick nodded his understanding.

"C'mon," He said to Maggie feeling exactly like he'd broken her heart for the third or fourth time since this all began. "She's gotta be close. Gather around."

Samir flagged the rest of the soldiers down and they knelt by Rick's feet as he explained his thoughts for proceeding to them. Without a diagram of the compound, they were completely flying blind. And as a group of nine, they would hardly be inconspicuous once they emerged from the woods, so Rick proposed a split. Samir would lead a group of five to the first building on the left side of camp, Rick, Maggie and his bunch would take the right. With any luck, the fire and firefight at the front gate would continue to keep all eyes and attention in that direction, as Carter and Rick had agreed upon. They had to sweep the property quickly but methodically.

"No chance I can convince you to hang back here with one of the guys?" Rick ventured, hoping that the incessant gunplay that punctuated any long moments of silence might make Maggie a little more leery than she had been to that point.

"No, I need to know Michonne's okay. I need to see it. I need to know that Shane didn't let anything happen to her."

"This is not a game," Rick said angrily, trying to keep his voice down.

"I know, Rick. It's her life, but it's _mine too_ ," Maggie retorted indignantly.

As it had been since he first told her what was going on, short of handcuffing her to one of the trees, there was little hope of Rick dissuading Maggie or leaving her behind. He sighed heavily in exasperation.

"Okay, three short flashes, one long one will tell me you've found something," Rick said to the guys then Jean-Claude translated the message.

Samir tipped an imaginary cap to Rick and Maggie before breaking off from them with a small group following closely behind him. Rick went the other way pushing through the trees.

The large, intertwined root system and soft, spongy, peat moss-like underbrush made trekking through the small forest surprisingly difficult. Every member of their party tripped at least once over the tall protruding roots and their boots sank easily into the ground beneath them, reducing their traction. As a result, the walk that should have taken five minutes took ten.

They came down the incline from the trees and encountered their first building, one of the few that wasn't currently on fire at the moment. Breaking off an antique padlock on the back door with the butt of his rifle, they took the corridor two-by-two with Rick leading the way. The air inside was musty as if the windows hadn't be opened in decades. Looking over the thick layer of dust and cobwebs covering everything, it seemed as if that might be true. Swinging her light in a sweeping motion, Maggie looked around as Rick did. The building seemed to have six small rooms off the main hall. As they entered the first, they seemed to be in what used to be a mechanical workshop from the look of the dusty, rusted and abandoned equipment. As they moved further through, they saw another room was formerly for woodworking.

"What is this place?" Maggie wondered under her breath.

" _Une école_ ," Jean-Claude answered easily.

"School, huh?" Rick said in a whisper, running his fingers through the dust on the work surface of an old jointer-planer. "Apparently, Negan doesn't go in for teaching his children."

They swung the flashlights back and forth into identically disused rooms while making their way toward the front of the building. At the door, Rick looked out the side windows trying to gauge the distance to the next structure. They had about a hundred feet to the next nearest building with nothing but chances for exposure in between. Still, they had yet to see a single Savior yet. But Rick was weary of counting his blessing too soon.

"C'mon, two-by-two like the last time," He instructed, raising his rifle again as the rest of the group did the same and he swung the door open.

Stealthily, they made their way to the next building, much larger than the last, it had double doors, one of which was already propped open. Rick hustled inside, flagging the others to hurry in behind him. Once they were all in, he pulled the door shut behind them. They looked around, but it was pitch back without windows. One of the Trippies quickly bumped into something that clattered to the floor noisily.

"Pardon," he whispered reflexively. His face, when the headlamps of others' shone on it, was appropriately abashed.

"Shhh!" Another said softly.

 _They might be good soldiers but they were crap as covert operatives_ , Rick remarked to himself.

They looked around, it was a kitchen. Too large for a house but a bit too small to be considered industrial by American standards. Unlike in the last building, this room was clearly used. Not only was it fragrant with the scent of fruits and spices but the surfaces were fairly pristine. Moving through the long counters that spanned the room quietly, Rick saw a spiral staircase leading to an upper floor. He gestured for Maggie to take a couple of the guys up. Once they were gone, he led Jean-Claude out through the swinging doors. On the other side was a smallish gymnasium, lined with tables. Rick hugged the wall in the wide-open space instead of cutting down one of the aisles and straight across. Again, it was entirely silent. Other than the gunfire outside, the building was completely, eerily still.

 _Where were all the people?_ Rick couldn't reconcile it. There were clearly far fewer people in this camp than he thought, although it obviously had the capacity for many more.

A moment later, as he was halfway to the other side of the room, he heard a commotion. Training his gun on the other entrance to the gym, he saw the familiar red light preceding his teammates. Maggie came down a set of stairs with a woman and man in tow. The Trippies kept their guns trained on them as Maggie walked a bit ahead. Despite the fact that Maggie was not being precisely gentle pulling her into the room, the woman walked gracefully. There was an air of regality in her bearing. The youth, however, was sullen and clumsy. As he approached, Rick saw that someone had zip-tied their hands together in front of them.

"Go on, tell him," Maggie said to the woman when Rick finally reached them. She gave the woman a small nudge with her elbow.

Up close, even with only the ghastly light cast by the red beams, Rick could see the woman was beautiful and elegant. She looked entirely out of place on this compound, particularly as the sounds of machine-gun fire rang out through the night. Clothed in only a colorful cloth skirt and cotton t-shirt with her silvery-white locs flowing loose over her shoulders, it was obvious that they had caught her unawares.

"She lives upstairs she says," Maggie explained. "Says she's the cook."

Rick doubted that seriously but didn't try and refute it.

"Tell him!"

Maggie nudged the woman again and she, in turn, looked at Maggie as if she could take the top of her head off with only a glance. The young man did similarly. Maggie raised her rifle as the woman looked on mildly. Short of pulling the trigger, they were clearly going to have to do a lot more to scare her. So Rick decided not to bother.

"It's okay, ma'am," He said politely. Rick knew this wasn't the cook. _A wife, perhaps? One way or another, she probably knew where Michonne was._ "We're looking for Michonne."

Rick saw as the woman's eyes perked up with recognition but still, she said nothing.

"Tell him what you said to me," Maggie demanded with an uncharacteristic hostility. "Tell him, _now_."

"Please," Rick said simply.

But she continued to look at him stone-faced and silent. Maggie sucked her teeth.

"She said that Shane took her out into the woods and he killed her," Maggie cried.

Rick reeled for a second, his heart galloping in her chest.

"But we know that's not true!" Maggie exclaimed as if trying to reason with him. "We know they're not together. He was looking for her!"

"Well then, he just has not done it _yet_ ," The woman finally broke her silence to speak in short, crisp sentences. Her voice was husky as if her vocal chord were frayed. "But trust me, he will."

"You're a liar!" Maggie retorted angrily.

"My dear, he's already tried once," The woman answered simply. But something about the way she said it sounded sympathetic and distressed.

"You are a liar!" Maggie said again.

"Maggie, calm down," Rick said trying to soothe her. He put a hand on her arm and she stopped speaking. "Where would she be?"

The woman looked at Rick, sizing him up, he imagined.

"We're taking her home if we have to burn this whole place down to do it," He warned.

And given that more than half the buildings were already on fire that seemed like a significant threat. She looked around hesitating before speaking again. The young man at her side seemed surprised by her forthcomingness. She sighed heavily as she relented.

"We kept her in a room on the third floor of the large building in the center of the compound...but she's not there. I sent my daughter to check."

They waited as she thought about it.

"She's a smart girl. If she got away from your boyfriend, she's going to hide where she believes no one would think to find her. The last place anyone in this camp would voluntarily go."

"Which is where?" Rick asked as Maggie gawked at the woman and all the Trippies watched the whole exchange fascinated.

" _Le trou d'obéissance_ ," The woman answered and Maggie gasped.

"Le _what_?"

"The Obedience Hole," Maggie explained.

Rick tried to control his anger at the situation yet again. After finding out where this hideous punishment device was, he had the Trippies lock the woman and the young man, who had obviously been guarding her upstairs, in the Pantry. He had no intention of killing people if he didn't have to. And the woman _had_ been helpful.

As Maggie set her down to sit on the floor in the pantry closet, Rick stood in the doorway and heard her ask the woman a question.

"How did you know that Shane is my boyfriend?" Maggie asked affixing the woman with a gag but pausing before she put it across her mouth.

"We've seen you," The woman said simply. "How do you think we got messages to Mr. Walsh? It's not as if it's safe to use a phone."

Maggie shook her head as clueless as Rick was just listening in on their conversation.

"Ariane, of course. Like any man, Dada is very selective about who his wife speaks to. Why else would he allow her to associate with you, _Ms. Greene_?"

* * *

 _Just a little bit more, she could take it_.

Michonne crouched in the hole. It stunk to high heaven of sweat and urine but after her adventures in the composting room earlier, this stench now was just par for the course. She just needed to wait there a little while anyway. Then the coast would be clear to pick a fence, climb it and all but walk out of camp.

As she had imagined it would, the chaos was hitting a fever pitch. With invaders at the gate and fires beginning to rage all around, the level of calamity engulfing the camp was soon to be more than the 30 or so odd soldiers and laypeople that lived here could handle on their own. It was obvious, to her at least, that by the time this night was over, this one outpost of Ngangabouka's would be no more. Even as she slipped back into the center of things and down into this hole to hide, Michonne could see everything falling apart. The Big House was on fire as were the prison "apartments". The old buildings, made primarily of mudbrick and timber, would stand little chance against electrical fires. And for all the others, the "new" constructions, all that would be left standing of them by morning would be the metal joinings and concrete bricks where buildings once stood.

It was all a death trap. So much so, in fact, that she debated, for a moment, going back into her prison just to make sure that Fabian had escaped safely.

 _But she had to think of her right now_ , she reminded herself as she sat in the hole listening to the sound of fire voraciously consuming all it came into contact with, and shouts and screams and feet passing overhead and bullets that broke the sound barrier and popped like heated metal kernels in the night.

 _Just a little longer_ , she told herself again.

Finally, the soot and smoke from the fires began to settle and carpet the ground, falling into her little hole. When she began to choke is when she knew her time had come. Easing the unlocked iron gate on the top open, Michonne peered out. She still planned to make use of the point of egress she'd chosen for herself days earlier as the way out. Now the various fires illuminated the night sky, casting an odd, flickering orange glow over the entire courtyard between buildings as she moved in the shadows, circuitously to the abandoned cars between the big house and the gymnasium.

Just before she slipped into the dank hole, she'd stolen a man's shirt and an ill-fitting pair of shorts off a clothing line behind the prison, now she seriously considered doing it again. She already knew, she was going to take eight showers when she got home.

 _Home_.

Despite being only at the very beginning of her escape, she could already see the finish line. She knew better than to be that arrogant, that hopeful but she also knew she would die before she went back into that small room again to be a pawn in whatever game Ngangabouka and Shane were playing.

She made it over the wide-open field that separated her from her exit by hewing closely to the shadows as she crossed it, mindful of the handful of people that were foolishly playing fire brigade and trying to douse water on an electrical fire. When she reached the old rickety jeep, she climbed on top, preparing to jump onto the fence.

Just then, hands reached out from the shadows and grabbed her from behind.

Michonne screeched in abject frustration and outrage. _To be this close only to be caught!_ She turned and wailed on the person holding her screaming loudly.

"NO! NO! NO!"

"Michonne! Michonne, _it's me,_ " The voice whispered harshly, trying to calm her.

 _Rick_.

She couldn't believe it. She leaped into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck and squeezed.

"RICK!" She began to shout before quieting down. She couldn't believe her eyes, it had to be a fever dream or a perversely satisfying nightmare.

"What are you doing here? Wait? _Is this you?_ " She looked around indicating she was talking about the chaos and fire that surrounded them.

She dropped to her feet and released him slowly, just in time to see Maggie standing beside him with an M16 rifle that was nearly her size slung across her chest. They looked around and crouched down then to use the large jeep as cover.

"Oh my God! Maggie?" She said incredulously, pulling the girl into a hug that Maggie reciprocated enthusiastically.

"We can't do this here, now," Rick reminded them.

"We came to rescue you," Maggie said exactly like an excited child might.

"Just you two?" Michonne asked, struggling to whisper.

"There are more," Maggie explained.

"We split up. We thought you were in the "hole" but there was some thought that you might have gone back to your cell— since no one would expect that."

 _Michonne had considered it_.

"But we saw you running across the grounds, so we followed you. We gotta meet up with the rest of the group and get back out."

"Have you seen Shane?" Maggie asked earnestly.

 _Michonne didn't know what to say_. She shook her head.

"It's okay, 'Chonne," Rick said then. "We know."

Maggie's face darkened and tears came to her eyes. "I'm so so _so_ sorry, Mich."

Michonne hugged her friend to her again while looking at Rick's stoic expression. "Not now. Let's get out of here now. _Later_."

Maggie nodded and wiped her face with the hem of her sleeve.

"I was going over the fence," Michonne pointed upward then.

"We saw," Rick smirked. "And while that's an idea, maybe we can think of a better one."

"Better than getting out of here right now?" Michonne said looking around.

Despite the fact that they said they knew, Michonne somehow doubted that they knew Shane was still seeking her, right at that moment. She'd seen him earlier stealthily reenter the camp and join with Dwight's men to retake the front as if nothing had happened. As long as he was up there, however, she was good but she wasn't confident how much longer that would be.

Michonne saw a flash of light out of the corner of her eye and turned ready to bolt again.

"It's okay, it's some of our people," Rick reassured her, putting a hand on her shoulder.

"Our people? How many people is that?"

"I got a little help from Carter," Rick answered, standing up and lifting his flashlight to signal back.

 _Carter_? Michonne thought like he was a blast from a distant past and not a man she'd had dinner with a fortnight ago. Michonne and Maggie rose from their crouch to see who was coming.

Just then, a bullet hit the Jeep and ricocheted loudly.

Before they knew what was happening, there was a barrage of bullets coming from at least three directions. Rick pushed Michonne and Maggie into a crouched sprint across the grounds while he covered them with a return of fire. He simultaneously looked around for his teammates. He covered Michonne's head with his hand and arm as she led Maggie behind one of the shells of the old, abandoned jeeps that dotted the compound, before turning around to open fire. Samir and Carter's guy Justin Barnes appeared at their side, a few feet away laying down cover fire while running in the opposite direction. After a frantic moment in which the windows and tires of the car they hid behind were blown out by the spray of bullets that followed them, they shot back at the Saviors from their crouch behind the engine block.

* * *

"Shit, it's Dwight."

Rick quirked his head at Michonne.

"The guy we got away from in Bahanga," Maggie explained.

 _This was not good_. Rick realized. ... _Understatement of the millennia_.

Dwight and his henchmen had succeeded in separating their group when they were already outnumbered and outgunned. As if he knew this, Dwight triumphantly emerged from the cover provided by the building they had exited, shooting at them with his M60 automatic machine gun. It was surreal and almost humorous, calling to Rick's mind the famous end of the film _Scarface_ , but it was effectively unnerving. Accompanied by an onslaught of suppressive gunfire, it prevented Rick or his partners from firing back.

*Come out, Cowards!* Dwight screamed in French, proving himself as deranged as his boss.

From his crouch, Rick turned suddenly to see, as he suspected, a Savior scurrying through the brush behind them for a vantage point from which to pick them off. Tracking him in the relative darkness by the rustling of the leaves, Rick let off one shot that caught him in the chest. The man fell out of the bushes tumbling to the ground. From their position, he saw when Barnes turned to do the same thing to their left. As Dwight ran out of bullets and resorted to his handgun, Rick and Samir saw their opening, alternately ducking behind the cars and rising to fire yet again. Samir shot the two closest to Dwight as they revealed themselves to help him dive back into the shelter of the building.

*You come and attack us? _Ngangabouka_? You dare? We will kill you all!* Dwight shouted using his own surprisingly effective form of psychological warfare in addition to an avalanche of bullets to pin them down and harry them. He wouldn't stop screaming obscene, nonsensical threats in French and English at them between machine gun blasts. "And fuck your dogs and mothers!"

Sheltered behind a car, Rick changed the spent magazine in his rifle and watched Michonne cower behind him fearfully. He knew he needed to get her and Maggie over to where Justin and Samir were, but no one would be able to move until they pushed Dwight back further. _What had they gotten themselves into?_ He was not supposed to be in a firefight with rebels, but when he and Carter engaged the Trippies, there could be no mistaking that this was _exactly_ what they were working up to. Rick's brain bounced from problem to problem frantically. He needed to focus on one issue at a time.

He'd finally gotten Michonne back safe and sound. Now it was just a matter of getting her and Maggie out of here.

Rick rose up from his kneeling stance and shot back, catching one Savior in the chest before ducking.

"Where are the other guys?" He called out in a faux whisper to Samir.

"At the front," He answered back over the sound of gunfire. "Carter needed the help. So I sent them there."

 _Shit_ , Rick thought. _It might have seemed like the smart play then but they could definitely have used the extra hands now._

Glass rained down on them as Dwight's people tried to turn their shelter into swiss cheese.

Rick popped up to return fire.

"We've got to get the girls—"

Rick couldn't finish his sentence. Suddenly, it felt as if someone had smacked him in the shoulder with a spiked two-by-four.

 _He was shot._


	62. Chapter 62

* **Author's Note** *

Hey Guys, quick note: I'm _so_ sorry. I must admit, like I have on occasion with others, that I'm not thrilled with this chapter. Don't get me wrong, it's fine. It's just another one of the ones I wrote a long time ago and so has been quietly sitting on deck patiently waiting for me to complete work on either side of it before time for its release. But I wanted to add to it- buff and polish it to a high shine before I posted it. Unfortunately, life has intervened (in the form of everything from my friend's b-day celebrations to the Royal Wedding) all preventing me from doing anything more than posting it if I wanted to keep to the schedule. So here it is, in its more "incomplete" form. Hope you still enjoy it!

 _8/5/15_ _03:01 CAT_

Medical Station Omicron, Rwanda

Michonne put the hand holding the knife up to shield her eyes while the other held tightly to her cane. The whirling blue emergency light had an unfortunate disorienting effect that Michonne was certain was unintended. It made identifying the precise location of the door knob unexpectedly difficult. She looked back briefly at the only steady bright light still in the room -the computer monitor. From her distance, she could still see Rick's face filling the screen and looking intently into the darkness on her side. He'd told her to be careful instead of what she knew he wanted to say, 'Don't go' because he knew she wouldn't listen. But now trepidation filled her and she found she wanted to listen to his unspoken plea. She was surprised to find that when her hand finally touched the doorknob, it was trembling.

At least she was armed like Rick had asked. Before they'd left days ago, Lance Corporal Dixon had entrusted her with the small paring knife he'd pilfered from the kitchen. He'd surreptitiously placed it in her sweater pocket as he pulled her into a surprising hug. Then he'd muttered into her ear, "So if anything tries to bite ya, you can bite back."

At the time, Michonne had been stunned by the whole incident, uncertain of what he meant and what he'd slipped to her. But she had hugged him close anyway, thanking him for his dedication and begging him to keep an eye on the Captain. It wasn't until she got back to her room and saw what it actually was, that she realized she could have hugged the soft-spoken but gruff marine again….even tighter this time.

Suddenly, there was a single loud, hard bang on the door a second before Michonne swung it open that made her heart gallop and her stomach drop nearly into the soft ballet slippers they'd issued her for her feet. The forward momentum swung the door nearly off its hinges and into Michonne's face. She hopped back surprisingly nimbly to avoid getting a face full of door. Her mouth was dry with fear irrationally. This, despite the fact that she wasn't certain this wasn't just some sort of either drill or false alarm.

"Michonne," Sgt. Espinosa stated firmly as if she was telling Michonne her own name. She took one step into the room and took Michonne by the forearm, pulling her out. "We gotta get..."

Michonne could barely make out what she said. The rest of Rosita's words were swallowed up by the incessant and deafening noise. Michonne was simultaneously relieved to see her but still made nervous by the Sergeant's brusk behavior. The woman pulled her down the dim red hall with clear purpose, though Michonne had no idea what that was. Because of the normally monochrome whiteness of the walls, the red auxiliary lights and swirling blue alarm light saturated everything, casting the hall in a nearly purple light.

"Sergeant, what's going on?" Michonne tried to shout over the piercing alarm sound that seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.

Rosita looked at her and shook her head, pointing at her ear to indicate that she couldn't make out what Michonne was saying either.

"I SAID, WHAT THE FUCK IS—" Michonne shouted just as the alarm cut out suddenly and all they were left with was her bellowing voice filling the hall.

"...um, going on?" She finished in her regular speaking voice awkwardly.

The lights hadn't come back on but there was blessed silence. The whirling blue disco ball light cut off as well, leaving the halls bathed in the remaining red light. Michonne actually exhaled with an odd sort of relief.

Rosita shrugged, while answering, "I don't know but nothing's happening to you. That's all I know. Not on my watch." She was still pulling Michonne down the hall.

Rosita's head moved side to side wildly and she eyed each of the empty rooms on either side of the hall as they passed them. It was as if she expected someone to jump out at them. Michonne would never have admitted it, but even that was stoking her latent anxiety. What had begun at perhaps a four or five when she left Rick to investigate was currently ratcheting up to a seven or eight. Michonne recognized that in the absence of a real reason to be frightened, she needed to get a hold of herself. Still, that was proving difficult.

"Sergeant, what are you doing? Where are we going?" Michonne hurried as quickly as she could manage though it didn't appear fast enough for Rosita. "Do you know what's happening?"

The Sergeant sighed heavily as she dragged Michonne along with her clumsily.

"We're headed to our designated meeting spot."

"Designated…?" Michonne tried not to be annoyed that this was yet another bit of planning with Rick she hadn't been made privy to. "Where is that?"

Rosita continued pulling without answering until Michonne stopped moving, digging her heels in. In the flimsy slippers, she'd still just slide across the floor but without her cooperation, it would make moving her unreasonably difficult for the other woman.

Rosita took a deep breath and turned back to Michonne. "It's upstairs in the atrium where we came in."

"How do you plan for us to get there?" Michonne said skeptically. She'd been making a mental accounting of the place and she knew you could barely get to a bathroom without one of those blasted keycards.

And at that moment, as if she'd willed it despite the fact that it was more or less inevitable, they came upon the first in what Michonne and Rosita both knew would be a multitude of locked doors impeding their progress. Michonne put her hand on it testing it. In some facilities, in case of emergency, all the doors unlocked automatically. Unfortunately, they were in one where the opposite was true, which she had already figured.

She sighed loudly.

"With one of these," Rosita suddenly produced a key card.

Michonne gasped, grabbing for it. "Where the _hell_ did you get one of these?"

Rosita easily evaded her and slid the card smoothly through the reader. The door beeped as a prompt for an accompanying code.

"Let's hope Glenn is as good as he claims to be," The Staff Sergeant said under her breath as she keyed in a code to the pad. There was a brief but potent pause. They both exhaled audibly a moment later when the sound of the cylinder turning and the pneumatic seal breaking signaled that the door was open.

"They're keeping our weapons up there. About seven flights up. Scott told Sasha."

Michonne was impressed. Scott and Sasha weren't all budding romance after all, Sasha had been doing some reconnaissance as well.

"I won the card off Porter, in a private game of strip poker —don't ask—" She eyed Michonne with her normal scowl but her voice gave away a certain smugness. "Then Glenn secretly g'd it up with super user permissions while he was digging around in the mainframe for a way for you to talk with the Captain. Luckily, Negan's people are Luddites. They had no idea what he was doing."

"Well, that's convenient," Michonne said dumbfounded.

She suddenly felt bad that she'd been so busy envisioning her own escape plan for them that she'd missed the chance to collaborate on the far more ingenious machinations of her colleagues. _She was well out of loop_. But now Glenn's sudden obsession with getting her and Rick their own personal version of FaceTime made _a lot_ more sense.

 _This was Rick's idea_ , she had no doubt but asked anyway.

Rosita nodded once, tersely. "Not the details of course, just that we were to instigate a means of escape…"

 _In case he didn't make it back_ , she knew without seeking clarification.

"But the hows and whens of it, he left to us." Rosita pushed through the doorway as the crackle of the PA system announced itself overhead.

They both paused and looked up waiting to hear something.

"Remain calm. This was a false alarm. For everyone's safety please stay where you are," The voice over the public address was Ariane's. She spoke crisply as if her teeth were clenched around each word.

"C'mon, let's keep moving." Rosita groused, reaching the door to the stairwell and swiping the card again. "I wouldn't trust that bitch's word if she told me it was snowing in the middle of a blizzard."

Michonne smiled to herself at Rosita's prescient and astute assessment of Ariane's character. It occurred to her then as she followed Rosita into the dark silent stairwell, _if she had just been smart enough to make that same determination four years go, maybe many parts of her life now would have been different._

* * *

06:27 GMT

 _WHO Laboratory - Deptford, Aberdeenshire, Scotland_

"It can't wait any longer. We need it now!" Rick demanded.

"Rick, we cannot give it to you now," Dr. Jones said evenly for the second time, wiping sleep from his eyes.

It had been five hours since Rick witnessed the alarm going off at Omicron Station. No one had responded to any sort of hail since then. Rick had sat at the computer for another hour after Michonne had disappeared from view, wasting bandwidth and waiting for either the signal to cut out or for her to return. Neither thing happened though he'd heard Ariane's unnerving announcement. After that, he'd scrambled for other ways to reach the facility. In the end, at minutes to five in the morning, the laptop Michonne had been using must have finally just lost juice since the whole screen went black and presumably powered down.

Rick had struggled to keep his agitation to a minimum since then. But he knew he couldn't just sit there and wait out the answer to his question of what happened. He couldn't wait patiently in a different hemisphere until someone decided to send them a message or call through their jerry-rigged video phone connection to say it was all clear. And in fact, the more hours passed, the more Rick was absolutely certain that things were not alright.

"Captain Grimes, what we have right now we have no proof works," Dr. Moritz added, leaning heavily against the lab station and nursing a cup of coffee. "We don't even have lab animals we could test this out on. Its efficacy is all wildly and more importantly, _dangerously_ hypothetical. Ethically, we couldn't give you what we have now even if we wanted to."

"It's fuckin' moronic to even think so, _Richard_. We have to continue the trials and figure out a protocol. Right now, we have fuckall," Cappy pronounced with clear irritation and his usual eloquence. Even in the early hours of the morning and on minimal amounts of sleep, Rick had discovered Cappy always had a slightly twitchy, bug-eyed, wired look about him.

Rick had convened this emergency meeting to get the consensus of the group. In addition to his people, a few other doctors and technicians stood in a small circle in the main lab with Doctors Jones, O'Hare, Moritz and Capaldi to offer their professional insight. And though it was barely morning many of them had not yet slept. As a result, tempers flared and no consensus could be reached. Particularly since they weren't saying what Rick wanted to hear.

"Not good enough. I need to leave. In the next few hours."

Daryl stood at Rick's right but said nothing one way or another, but Carol watched at him with concern.

"Rick... _Captain_ ," Carol said self-correcting after seeing Rick's stern expression, but still gently chiding. "We don't even know for sure that anything happened. We can't—"

"Lieutenant," Rick cut her off formally. He already felt it in his gut, something _was_ wrong. "What we can't do is sit around and wait for a message that may never come."

"Don't be rash, man!" Cappy interjected.

"Look," Rick directed his words to Carol as if Cappy hadn't spoken. "I don't know how exactly I'd get there without you flying us but I will damn-well figure something out if I have to."

Carol sighed, speaking under her breath while shaking her head, "Of course if you're leaving then I am too. Don't be stupid."

Daryl concurred with a single nod.

"Then you're all daft! You've risked your lives to come here for something. People are relying on you!"

"That's _exactly_ right," Rick said pointedly.

"Dammit, Rick! It's about more than one community. How can you even bloody _think_ of leaving now without what you came all this way for?" Dr. O'Hare asked glaring at Rick with a mixture of anger and concern.

Of all the doctors and staff still in the facility, Dr. O'Hare, Dr. Jones and Dr. Capaldi had spent the most time with Rick and his group, talking them through procedures, explaining things, and sharing their experiences. _Socializing_. They'd come the closest, in this very short period of time, to becoming what Rick would consider friends. And given that he'd only known Peletier and Dixon for four days longer and they had already become indispensable, indelible fixtures in his life, to Rick that _meant_ something. Cappy, Ruth, Moritz and Morgan's opinions mattered to him and from more than just a medical standpoint. Still, he wasn't going to be deterred. _Not on this point. Not when it came to Michonne and the rest of his people._

Omicron Station had gone dark _. He had to know why_.

"Oh, I'm not leaving without it." Rick corrected her then. "You're absolutely right, I can't go back empty-handed. Screw ethics. You're gonna give me what you have. _Right now_."

* * *

 _12:47 GMT_

 _(4km outside of Dyce, Scotland)_

"It's fine. He'll be fine."

As Rick said that for the fourth time to the third person, he realized he maybe felt a little guilty about leaving Mamet at the facility. Left on his own, their doctor was going to be subject to the "tender mercies" of the doctors there- their little lab rat. Rick rubbed at the soreness in his upper arm irritably as he walked and thought of that. He knew he owed Mamet less than nothing but the idea still unsettled him for reasons he'd yet to pinpoint even after mulling it for a while. For the most part, the WHO doctors seemed an ethical bunch, no Dr. Mengalas among them, not even a slightly shady-seeming Dr. Lerner in their ranks, but after leaving Michonne and the others in Rwanda, he realized he just deeply disliked leaving any of his people behind…must have been the Marine in him. He just knew fallen comrades were not to be abandoned.

 _But that wasn't what he was doing...was it?_

"Are you telling me this, Captain? Or are you telling yourself? Because I know that already," Dr. Jones smiled congenially.

They'd all been walking in relative silence intent on getting back to the plane in as uneventful a manner as possible. But to Rick's surprise as they got within a stone's throw of the airport, the conversational flood-gates had apparently opened up. And after two hours of hiking in virtual silence, he had to admit it was actually nice to make a bit of small talk —Rick's brain threatened to run riot otherwise. So he smiled mildly at the doctor in response and looked around at his newest band of traveling companions. Like when they left Turkey down two people but up three, circumstance had dealt them another bizarrely similar hand of musical teammates.

"He's in good hands," Morgan reassured Rick as he hefted his pack on his back once to adjust its weight.

When Dr. Jones insisted on returning with them to the USAMRIID site, it had been easy for Rick to allow him along. For one, they'd discovered a few days prior that he was ex-military, a Royal Navy man, to be exact. But they also reasoned, given all they'd been through while in transit, it might actually be a good idea to have some medical personnel along for the ride. Their second new companion, however, was a complete, and initially unwelcome, surprise.

* * *

"Hey!"

A sudden voice coming from the treeline bordering the train tracks made all heads turn. They'd been roughly thirty minutes from their last encounter with the infected. Still, they, as a group, remained on edge. The last band of marauding things had been relatively large and had driven them off the small country lanes they'd been on back to the more insulated railway. The voice belonged to a young woman who appeared from behind a tree and then jumped back behind it a fraction of a second before a bullet whizzed by her previous location.

"Whoa, whoa! Human!" She bellowed from behind the thick trunk. "Don't shoot!"

Rick and Carol both looked at Daryl, who had pulled the trigger. He normally had better reflexes than that. And the little indifferent shrug he gave in vague apology told them he still did.

"Miss, are you armed?" Rick called out to the young woman.

"Armed? I wish. It might have saved me two days stuck up a tree."

"Come out from there." Carol said exasperatedly. "We're not going to shoot at you...again."

She cut Daryl a peeved look, although Rick noticed no one had lowered their weapons. Not even him. Rick whipped his finger around in the air, indicating that he wanted everyone to keep their heads on a swivel in case anyone or thing else was planning to come out of the trees.

The young woman stepped out from behind the tree slowly, showing her bare hands first before the rest of her. Immediately, Rick felt a pang of concern for her. Dressed in a dirty, tattered t-shirt and shorts, the young brunette was obviously a hiker. _What a week to decide to get back to nature_ — _the week nature bit back_. Rick shook his head at her condition. Leaves and twigs protruded from her messy ponytail, her face and clothing were stained in mud and what appeared to be dried blood and she was covered in cuts and bruises, the worst seemingly on her knees and forearms.

Carol actually gasped at the sight. "What happened to you?"

 _As if they all couldn't already guess._

"I was—"

The woman began to lower her raised arms for a moment before Carol indicated with her gun that she should keep them up.

"I was hiking with my family. It's so stupid. We were supposed to be going, um, well I wanted to see Nessie…"

"Nessie?" Daryl murmured.

"The Loch Ness Monster," Morgan explained stifling a smirk.

Rick lowered his gun, having already judged the young lady harmless. By her accent, she was obviously an American tourist stranded thousands of miles away from home.

"Where'ya from, Nessie?" Daryl asked lowering his own weapon. Very shortly, Carol and Morgan did the same.

She brushed the wild tendrils of her natty hair out of her face and then lowered her hands slowly. "Actually, my name's Tara, thanks. I'm from Long Island."

"You're a long way from home, _Long Island_ ," Daryl continued unfazed by her correction.

"Again, _Tara_ ," She said absently to him as she looked around on the ground, searching for something. "I had to drop my pack and get up this tree in the dark. If I go pick it up, you guys aren't gonna shoot me, right?"

"Depends on what's in it," Rick said deadpan as he briefly kneaded the bothersome ache on his upper arm.

Morgan looked at Rick askance. Standing in a small crescent around her, they all exchanged glances. Daryl used their brief pause to retrieve a bottle of water from his pack. He tilted it toward Rick, wordlessly offering him a swig. Rick passed, the idea of it nauseating him slightly. He made a face and shook his head before turning back to the young woman, Tara. It was clear at this point they were all just teasing her. Despite everything they'd been through the last few days, Rick had enough empathy to guess this girl's last week had been no picnic. It wasn't fair to draw this out.

She paused with her hand right above the strap of her large hikers' knapsack. "Just some cans of soup, my tent and some spare clothes."

"Go ahead," Rick nodded, giving her permission to reach for it.

"...None of which helped me when those things were standing under the tree waiting for me to come down."

Morgan eyed their surroundings nervously. "For two days? What changed? Where did they go?"

"That way, about an hour ago, a deer," She answered pointing into the trees. Rick realized then that it was most likely the pack they'd encountered a while earlier.

Tara bent over and rummaged through her pack, pulling clothing out…a hoodie sweater and a pair of jeans.

"You spent two days...up there?" Carol asked incredulously.

Tara nodded as she stripped off her filthy things and changed unselfconsciously. Before he turned away abruptly like all the men in their party, Rick saw more angry purple bruises and bloody cuts all over her pale arms and thighs.

"What happened?" Rick asked as he looked up and around, his eyes briefly focusing on the break in the clouds that revealed a clear blue sky. He let his gun hang at his side momentarily to palm the shoulder that vexed him.

"Done," Tara announced before continuing.

They all turned back around.

"I was going to ask you guys that. We were camping...obviously I guess, when one night a few days ago we heard screaming in the distance. We tried to call the emergency services in town to maybe get help but we couldn't get a signal. Not on my phone, not on theirs and they live here in the UK. So we decided to hike out at daybreak but overnight something attacked my sister Lilly in her tent."

Her face darkened. "It killed her but my brother-in-law Mac fought it off. But then, and I don't understand what happened, he just suddenly turned on us."

" _Us_?" Carol asked.

"Me and my niece Meghan..." Tara trailed off heaving a giant sigh that made her whole body shudder and Rick mentally prepared himself for the torrent of tears hours of fear and adrenaline had more than likely had kept at bay. _But_ _Nothing_ _happened_. "Anyway, I've basically been running ever since.

"Do any of you happen to have a can opener? _I'm starving_. I haven't eaten in days either. My friggin' brother-in-law had it along with all the pots and pans. Not that they'd have been a whole lot of help to me up a tree, I guess," She said calmly going off on a tangent. "Well, I mean, I suppose as weapons they could have worked. Whatever.

"Anyway, they got Meghan two days later when I left her in this barn we'd been hiding in. I had decided to try and go into town. Get help, get news, get clothes, find food...or at least a damn can opener. I just wanted to keep her safe, keep her hidden, just in case, ya know? It was stupid, I should have known something big was wrong. I should have known better than to leave her alone," She sighed again as if that whole line of thought itself fatigued her. Then she just stood there waiting for a response.

" _Tara?_ I'm a doctor. I think I should take a look at you," Morgan said very slowly and calmly, seeing the same thing in her blank affect that the rest of them did...possible shock.

"Doc, we don't have the time to do this," Rick said as tactfully as he could manage while he tapped his upper arm irritably.

Morgan glanced at him briefly before approaching her as if Rick hadn't spoken at all.

"What happened?" She asked again looking between them all for an answer. "I mean everyone I know is dead, so something must have happened. What?"

"Morgan, we do not have _time_ ," Rick spoke to Morgan as the doctor gently spoke to Tara in low tones pausing as if she were a skittish animal. He pulled a canteen out of his bag handing it to her. She thanked him politely, opened it and drank deeply, all with an unsettling calm.

"Look, honey, there's a lab about ten miles due east of here where they'll patch you up and give you a hot meal," Carol offered, siding with Rick.

"Ten miles?" Tara despaired as Morgan handed her alcohol pads for her numerous cuts. "Where are _you guys_ going? Can I come with you?"

"No!" Three people said simultaneously.

"You do not want to go where we're going," Dr. Jones explained softly then.

"I'd rather take my chances with you guys than hope I can make it another 10 miles unarmed and alone, if you don't mind."

Daryl pulled his large Bowie knife off his hip then and extended it to her hilt-first. "We mind."

"Oh c'mon!" Tara threw her arms in the air exasperatedly like an overwrought child and looked them over, her eyes finally settling on their guns. "I can help you!"

"No," Three voices again said in unison.

"No, wait. I can. I'm a cop. Back home, I'm NYPD."

"An' I'm a armadilla," Daryl threw back.

Even Rick was highly skeptical... _and impatient to get back on their way_. Morgan had finally judged her safe to travel judging by the way he closed his sack after handing her a granola bar and stepped back into line with the rest of them. They all gazed at this girl, who couldn't have been older than twenty-five, with big, brown doe-like eyes, round, cherubic cheeks and twigs and leaves still in her bedraggled nearly-jet black hair. Rick knew he couldn't be alone in looking at her and seeing fresh meat.

"No, seriously. NYPD patrolman Tara Chambler badge number 86295. I've got fourteen months on the job."

"A rookie?" Carol affirmed to which Tara nodded.

"Gimme a gun, I'll prove it."

"I don't think so," Carol answered reflexively.

But Rick nodded at Dixon, who proceeded to pull his Glock out of the holster. Daryl ejected the clip leaving the single chambered bullet in it and handed it to her.

"Really? One bullet?" Tara said affronted before shrugging. She held the gun in one hand cradled by the other and then took a deep breath.

"Behind me, seven o'clock, 'No Trespassing' sign," She declared.

They all looked up at the railway sign none of them had noticed before, across the tracks and affixed to a tree over fifty yards away. It was indeed behind her as she faced them, head down, readying herself. Rick noted her stance was correct and her hands were well-placed as she waited. Her grip was good and the gun did not shake. He nodded for her to proceed.

"The Pound sign," Tara specified matter-of-factly then spun and fired.

 _Her form was generally excellent_. Rick conceded as he watched the sign spin on its axis a second later like a pinwheel in the breeze. When it finally stopped, a small hole in the pound note sign of the penalty was very barely perceptible at their distance. Rick was man enough to admit he was impressed.

Carol and Morgan turned slightly seemingly to assess Rick's reaction but he just nodded again.

"We're going to Africa," Carol informed her plainly. "You up for that? 'Cuz we could maybe use the extra gun."

"You're _what_ now?" Tara looked around at them, the gun hanging limply at her side in her right hand. "You're punking me? _Africa_ Africa?"

"No, Africa, North Dakota," Daryl said snidely.

"That's a place?"

"I knew the American Educational System had its detractors but _honestly,_ " Dr. Jones added imperiously with a sigh then a roll of his eyes. But everyone else smiled with various degrees of amusement at Tara's expense.

"So that's _not_ a place?"

"Again, we are on a ticking clock. Are you in or out, Rook?" Rick shut them all down with impatient irritation. He hoisted his pack higher onto his back and turned to walk away. _It suddenly felt like the thing was filled with lead. And his arm would NOT stop burning._ "Corporal, give Officer Chambler the magazine and let's get going."

No sooner had he said the words than Dixon tossed the gun clip to her and turned away in the direction Rick was now facing. A second later, Carol followed suit, underhand throwing the girl a second clip.

 _Her reflexes were still good despite seven sleepless nights, two of which had been spent clinging for dear life to a tree,_ Rick noted as he looked at her over his shoulder as she easily caught both magazines. _She'd be a fine addition to their party but also quite fine on her own._

"It's a straight shot east, in the village of Deptford, you can't miss it. Ask for Dr. O'Hare, I promise she'll let you in. If you have any trouble whatsoever, you tell them the Thirteenth Doctor sent you. Good Luck." Morgan instructed her.

"Private joke," He explained with a shrug when they all looked at him curiously.

A moment later, their group headed off in silence. No one was willing to discuss what had just happened. Rick looked back only once from a distance to see Tara's retreating form headed in the opposite. And yet, fifteen minutes later, the fate of the young woman they had left behind was clearly burdening them. They didn't have a choice though, they just didn't have the time to safely accompany her back to the WHO lab. And it was unconscionable to seriously consider taking her along and leading her possibly to her death given what she'd already endured.

 _More than just her life potentially hung in the balance_ , Rick rationalized but it still gave him no comfort. Something about the girl stuck to him, unshakably.

Suddenly, the sound of feet rhythmically hitting the wooden rail ties and cans banging noisily together in a bag echoed behind them.

"Reckon you figured out where Africa was, Rook?" Daryl offered as Tara caught up with them panting.

No one slowed their stride as she came up alongside them panting. "I mean, I just figured I'm safer with you guys than I am trying to find some WHO-place. No offense, Doc."

"None taken," Morgan said looking straight ahead but smiling to himself.

"We're not headed there on a vacation," Carol said gruffly.

"I'm sorry I know we talked about this before," Tara double-timed it to keep up. "But headed where? For what, _exactly_?"

"To Rwanda, exactly," Rick answered looking into her face. "We're transporting important... medical equipment there and—"

"—An' going to get our people," Dixon added forcefully.

"That too," Rick concurred with an emphatic nod.

 _Maybe that more than anything else_.

Rick wasn't certain at that point whether he gave two shits about the whole rest of it at all anymore. Perhaps, he'd begun to consider, he could just get his people, go back to the States, grab his kids and find the highest, most remote, parcel of land he could find and just wait out whatever lay ahead. _The inevitable._ He knew that that was counterproductive thinking. If the contagion was allowed to run rampant, there would be few places on the planet that would qualify as "safe" for very long. Still, it didn't stop the thought from becoming more and more appealing. A small house where he and Michonne and his kids could live, could just be, _together_ , for as long as it was possible. That was all he wanted now...but he also realized wanting that was an unrealistic and difficult to achieve as suddenly winning the Mega lottery had been a week ago.

"...It doesn't matter where you're going, at this point. I'm in. I've got nowhere else to go," Tara was saying when Rick finally tuned back into the conversation happening around him. He glanced back at her walking astride of Carol and Daryl.

"You sure, now?" Carol asked. "I can guarantee you're gonna have to use that gun where we're going. If you stick around here, there's a chance you might not."

"Did I mention I've been stuck up a _tree_ for two days? Tell me, you got a cot I can sleep on for a couple hours and a can opener on this plane?"

"Yup," Daryl answered.

"Then, I'm with you."

Rick smirked in response. Although an old feeling of warning nagged at him everytime he looked at her, he couldn't help liking this Tara Chambler. At least she was a pragmatist...and a damn good shot.

Thanks to Morgan, they had found a small unmarked walking trail that allowed them to circumvent the bridge. It only added fifteen minutes to their journey, already significantly shorter without Milton and muddy terrain slowing them down. They were actually making good time, for which Rick was thankful. Though he wasn't planning to say anything yet, he was getting tired. If he was being honest, he was worried that if he fell asleep once they reached the plane he might not physically be able to get up again. And that idea truly terrified him.

He felt it in his bones. The fatigue was moving through his body. He felt it in the way he was starting to have to concentrate to follow a single thought from its origin to its logical conclusion. His mind raced and all his thoughts were becoming confused and manic and increasingly just circular conversations with himself. He felt the fatigue in other ways too. Like, in the way putting one foot in front of the other was beginning to feel like a deliberate choice instead of simply a reflex. It was as if he hadn't slept in days. He remembered that feeling from the beginning of the outbreak when it had truly been days since he'd gotten any real sleep and everything had started feeling a little foggy.

During the time before his power-nap with Michonne, before he slept the sleep of the dead for a couple hours. At that time he could have fallen asleep standing up. But now was different; he was fairly well rested now and yet it hardly made a difference. His limbs felt leaden, weighing him down. It was ironic in the days since they'd become guests of the World Health Organization, he'd gotten more rest than he needed. More than he'd had in weeks, maybe even months. He was talking to Michonne via the computer nightly and following it with a drink before bed that worked like a sedative. Until today, he'd really begun to feel recovered...but now more likely than not it didn't make any difference. It was all shot to hell now.

Finally to Rick's relief, as he was lost in thought and stilted conversation with Dr. Jones, they reached the point where they could actually make out the t-tails of the various planes parked on the airport tarmac rising up above the horizon line.

"Everything tickety-boo?" Morgan leaned into Rick and whispered then, disrupting his chaotic thoughts.

Morgan came closer when he didn't respond immediately, speaking low so as not to distract anyone else from the non-stop conversation Tara had engaged Carol and Daryl in. It was a wonder they hadn't attracted any unwanted attention as they had walked. Tara chattered nonstop until her voice had become indistinguishable from the background chittering of the squirrels rustling up and down in the trees.

"I'm asking how you are feeling, Captain? Alright?" He explained gently in the lower registers of his voice as if he could see something in Rick's demeanor.

Rick took a deep breath and scratched yet again at his shoulder. "I'm fine, Doc. Are you gonna keep asking me that?"

"Yes, Captain, I am. That's my job, in fact. I'm certainly not here solely for my devilishly good looks. I'm here to insure that we get Intervention 482 to Dr. Lerner alive and intact. Which means we all have to get there alive and intact...but especially you."


	63. Chapter 63

* **Author's Note** *

Okay, folks...(sigh) it's time. Let me first say sorry to the people for whom this will be a difficult chapter to read. It was difficult to write too. When I conceived of the story (in as much of the initial conception as was mine, I mean) this and a couple other key scenes were the parts of the story that came to me with crystal-clarity. (Michonne's first self-rescue in ATL was another one). They were the only parts of the story that were non-negotiable and not subject to change. Even when the story began to evolve these were my immovable objects. All that to say as a result, I've been dreading this as much as you have while also looking forward to the resolution (of some questions) it would provide. Anyway, nothing is as good on paper as it is in your mind's eye but I still hope I did this one justice. Proceed with caution:

May 11th 2011

Location Unknown ( _Approximately 45 km outside Nord Kivu, DRC_ )

The pain was searing as a bullet ripped through his left shoulder knocking him back. It filled his senses, blocking out sound and sight for a moment. Rick's eyes went dark briefly and when he opened them again he was shocked to find himself flat on his back, staring up at the treetop canopy that encroached on the compound from all sides.

"Oh my God!"

"Rick!"

Michonne and Maggie both cried out at the same time, horrified.

Michonne turned and nearly fell over him covering his body with her own, her face inches from his. She crouched over him, her eyes and hands searching him until she found the wound in his shoulder and then pressed it down hard.

"If you wanted to take that bullet for me, 'Chonne, you're about ten seconds too late," Rick gasped looking into her wide, frightened eyes. Despite it all, he did something somewhere between a smile and a grimace trying to reassure her.

"Don't joke!" Michonne's chin trembled and her eyes were glassy fighting back tears as she looked into his face.

"Shhh, don't think about it, just apply pressure," Rick whispered to her, biting his lip to keep from crying out as the pain grew while she did as instructed.

"Take this," He said to Michonne, weakly dragging his Sig Sauer from his holster and handing it to her.

 _She couldn't be unarmed right now._

Michonne shook her head but took it from him anyway, just long enough to put it on the ground beside her. Then she put her hands right back where they had been on his shoulder as if he hadn't spoken.

"Is he okay?" Samir called out from over behind the engine block of the old jeep near them that was providing him and Justin cover.

Maggie nodded.

"We need to get you guys to the front of the camp," Barnes yelled urgently to them between exchanges of gunfire.

"We need to rejoin the rest of the group," Samir concurred, falling back behind the car and flinching as bullets flew past the spot he previously occupied. "We're sitting ducks here."

Rick listened to the conversation and the crackling volley of interspersed gunfire that still rained down on them but it suddenly sounded far away to his ears.

"Too much pressure…" He said wheezing, finally growing faint from the pain. _He was going to pass out soon if something didn't change quickly._

Michonne eased off immediately but kept one hand to his shoulder.

"Oh God, I don't have anything! I left the kit!" Maggie said putting her rifle down and looking around inside the small knapsack she had been carrying in a panic.

It was obvious Michonne was flustered, her hands shook as she tried to find something to help staunch the continued blood loss. She looked down at herself searchingly before pawing at the sleeve of her shirt with bloody hands.

"I just can't…" Her sleeve was being less than cooperative in her blood-slick hands, refusing to be ripped cleanly away.

"My belt," Rick instructed calmly. "Help me up."

Maggie hooked her elbow under his other arm and helped to pull him upright as he grunted in pain. She helped him lean back against the car door while Michonne pulled at his belt buckle frantically. Maggie took up her rifle from her side and popped up again to return a spate of fire, aiding Justin and Samir in keeping the opposition from advancing past its respective side of the field.

"Keep checking behind us. They were trying to sneak up through the bushes before," He reminded her, pointing to the spot that he'd previously shot the Savior.

Maggie nodded and smoothly swung the large gun around 180 degrees to watch their six o'clock. _She was proving better at this than he was expecting or honestly comfortable with._ Rick realized.

"Okay, okay," Michonne said finally freeing his belt and fashioning a makeshift tourniquet over his shoulder by pulling it tight and buckling it. He reeled a bit from the pain of it.

"'Chonne, try not to kill me saving me, okay?" He said between clenched teeth, cringing as some of the gunfire came unsettling close to their heads, raining more glass and metal down on them.

She laughed and sobbed simultaneously overwhelmed. They looked at each other and Rick felt words bubbling to the surface. _But what could he actually say?_ _Things he'd wanted to for years but couldn't ever find the right words to articulate? There was no point in them now._ Instead, he grabbed her shaking, bloody hand and squeezed it to reassure her, though he wasn't sure there was any reassurance possible at the moment. They were pinned down behind inoperable cars and running out of personnel and ammunition. Regardless of what Rick tried to say, Michonne had eyes, she could see that things were not breaking their way just as obviously as he could.

"C'mere," He pulled her to himself and after a second of hesitation she came, mindful of his wound. Her forehead fell heavily onto the side of his face with her chin resting on his shoulder as she leaned into his uninjured side. They clasped hands and cringed as car parts exploded from above showering jagged bits on them. But they both closed their eyes and remained absolutely still for a single moment.

"Right now, I'm okay and you're okay," He whispered into her hair and for the briefest of seconds, she exhaled shakily and he did as well in some infinitesimal semblance of relief.

Then he untangled their intertwined fingers and reached down between their bodies for her gun, sitting forgotten in the dirt between them.

"Rick? What are you doing?" She asked distraught as he shifted away from her and she realized what was happening.

"Take my rifle but promise me you'll stay down," Rick said struggling back to his knees holding his injured arm limply to his side. After a return volley from the opposite side, Rick poked his head up to survey the field of fire, shooting off a few shots to provide himself cover.

 _What he saw was genuinely distressing._

At least seven bodies lay in plain view, dead or dying, casualties of the crossfire. The entire backdrop was ablaze, with nearly all the buildings on the compound now engulfed in flames. Distant pops of gunfire told him that Barnes was right, some of Carter's Trippies remained at the front fighting. _They needed to rejoin them._ Just then, he saw a tiny man break for the buildings heading back toward the rear where the pasture was, soon after another did, then another. He looked around quickly.

 _Were they attempting to circle around again or were they retreating?_ He couldn't tell in the chaos of bullets, fire and smoke.

 _He did see one thing though._

He let off another perfunctory shot in Dwight's direction and then slid back down behind the car.

"What?" Michonne asked anxiously reading his face. Maggie leaned into them to hear with her rifle propped up on her thigh.

"They're moving, falling back. There's a chance now. There's a working truck near the main house. We have to get to that Range Rover." He pulled himself up on his haunches again, crouching as if he was going to sprint across the field before Michonne grabbed him.

"No!" She held on to his good arm to stop him. "You can't, they're waiting for you to show yourself. It's you they want!"

There was a desperation in her voice that unnerved him, stole some of his confidence that he could do this thing. He hesitated, searching her eyes and seeing the terror in them. He took her hand again and pressed the back of it to his lips to calm her...but also himself. " No, 'Chonne, it's still you. It's still you they want. And I _can't_ let that happen."

"I'm sorry, I can't either," Maggie took the side of Michonne's face in her palm and kissed it suddenly, murmuring something into her ear before she sprang up to her feet.

"MAGGIE!" Rick shouted reaching for her with his weak arm a second too late as she ran around him.

Maggie sprinted out from behind their shelter of abandoned, bullet-riddled cars. She made a gesture to Justin and a moment later, he and Samir simultaneously popped up to lay down a spray of suppressive gunfire for her. Then Justin jumped to his feet right behind her, covering her flank as they made a frantic dash across the field.

Rick got to his knees, grabbed the rifle he'd tried to give Michonne and attempted to help Samir cover them. His shoulder screamed bloody murder as it was battered repeatedly by the kickback of the rifle as he sprayed the Saviors side with bullets. He hit one bold enough to pop up trying for Maggie and Justin, but not fast enough to stop him from letting off a last shot. It caught Barnes in the thigh and he staggered, putting him two then three steps behind her as she closed in on the truck.

Rick's gun clicked. _Empty._

"My pack, the mag," He demanded from Michonne ducking back behind the car to receive it from her. There was a loud crack and Rick saw over Michonne's shoulder as Samir's head jerked back instantly and he fell over dead. Michonne attempted to turn at the noise but Rick grabbed her arm suddenly, roughly.

"Focus! I need that fucking magazine!" He said hoping to distract her.

She looked up into his eyes stunned and then nodded clearly rattled by his tone with her. But she knew what he was doing, he could tell. His voice softened and he leaned into her, their foreheads nearly touching as he removed the spent cartridge from his gun.

"Promise me you'll run back there into the woods if anything happens to me. Do what you planned to do before. Climb over the fence, wait in the trees. Carter and his guys are up front. But General Ezekiel is supposed to be sending reinforcements. We sent them word, they should be here by dawn, I swear," Rick took the magazine from her trembling hands as he repeated it. "You just stay in the woods and hide until he gets here, _promise me_."

Michonne nodded, tears streaming down her face. He slapped the magazine into place in his rifle and took the side of her face in his hand, leaning his forehead against hers briefly.

"Michonne, I-I need you to know. I—" Rick fumbled with his words.

"I know," She looked into his eyes and Rick could tell she did. They just looked at each other for a second before he pulled away abruptly.

"There's a clip for the gun in the pack." He said finally before emerging from behind the car to fire again. In the seconds he'd been away as he suspected, the entire landscape had changed. _Everything had fallen apart._ Two more corpses littered the field. Another one of Dwight's men and Justin, who lay dead in the distance. His body was riddled with bullets and lifeless a few feet from the car. For a moment, Rick's eyes scanned the area searching before he spied movement. Dwight and his few remaining men were emerging from behind the shelter of the building. But Maggie had managed to get inside the car and was already behind the steering wheel. The brake lights illuminated as she started it up ducking down behind the steering column.

 _That girl had ice water in her veins_ , Rick mentally commended her as he resumed laying down cover fire in the direction he saw Dwight and his men, causing them to fall back a step.

She needed to reverse and maneuver the car into a position parallel to them in order for him and Michonne to make a similar run for it without the benefit of anyone left to provide them cover fire. As the car began to move, Rick saw Shane come around from behind another of the burning buildings with two men behind him. They saw each other immediately, even through the ever-thickening black smoke that billowed from the windows around them. Their eyes connected despite the distance. Rick saw as Shane's jaw set and he turned his gun toward him. Rick did the same but then to his surprise, Shane defected from his chosen side, firing at and hitting Dwight's right-hand man decisively in the head as Dwight jumped out of the way. As the body collapsed to the ground, Rick saw the reason for Shane's sudden change of heart.

"No! " He heard Shane shout out frantically. Turning his head toward the noise, just as Dwight pulled himself up and sprayed Maggie's car with bullets.

"MAGGIE!" Shane shouted.

Michonne got to her feet at the sound, breaking away from behind Rick before he could reach out to stop her, making for the careening car, insensible of the danger. Unmanned, it slammed into the side of one of the abandoned trucks and came to a hard stop.

Rick shot at Dwight at the same time as Shane, catching the last of his remaining soldiers at his side, who crumpled at his feet. Dwight, seemingly insensible of the loss, ducked quickly then shot back at Rick. Shane's men, after a moment of confusion, ran to join Dwight as Shane ran the other way toward the car Maggie had been driving.

"MAGGIE!" Michonne shrieked.

Rick tried to keep Dwight and his men engaged, but still saw Michonne pull the car door open and Maggie's body tumble out of the driver's seat, slumping sideways into her arms. Michonne screamed out in agony. It was a sound Rick had never heard from her before and which rendered him immobile for a second. Rick's whole chest felt like it caved in on him. He pressed down on his trigger until it stopped in a rage, leveling the rest of the magazine at the place Dwight and his two remaining followers were. The brick of the building threw up a fine dust as the automatic spray of Rick's bullets hit it. That mist added to the smoke in the air making the whole scene cloudy. Rick emerged fully from behind the jeep to run toward Michonne and Shane on leaden feet, gasping for breath from lungs that suddenly felt spent. His eyes burned as tears rushed to them.

Rick came back to his senses however, as a bullet whizzed by him buzzing like a mosquito near his ear. _Dwight._ He turned just in time to see Dwight toss his gun aside and run up, side-swiping him. The crazed soldier launched himself physically at Rick, tackling him roughly to the ground. Rick hit the dirt hard on the injured shoulder. The jolt of pain was blinding. Nevertheless, Rick balled up his fist and swung at Dwight hard. He drove hard fists at Dwight's head, shoulders and chest as they wrestled in the dirt. Even with his hands full grappling with his deranged attacker, however, Rick managed to glance toward the car where Shane moved toward Michonne. He saw at a distance when his former best friend roughly knocked Michonne aside, as she was scrambling to staunch the bleeding from Maggie's head.

* * *

Michonne heard the unending cracks of gunfire cutting through the air but didn't, couldn't look away from her beloved sister bleeding in her arms.

"Get away from her!" Shane growled, pushing Michonne away harshly. She fell back against the car door hard nearly dropping Maggie at impact.

"Shhh, shhh, nononono," Shane cried pulling Maggie's body gently out of Michonne's arms and looking down at his fiancée's blank face.

Blood streamed from where one eye used to be. "Mags?" He wailed, cradling her head in his lap and stroking her cheek. "What are you _doing_ here, Baby?"

Michonne sat back on her heels in stunned silence for a long moment unable to even think. It was beyond comprehension. She struggled to her feet, covered in even more blood, and backed away slowly, sobbing. _One moment Maggie had been there and the next all that was left was the hollow, beautiful shell of who she had been._ Michonne couldn't understand it.

She watched as if from a million miles away as Shane cried and cried, calling out her name and rocking Maggie's body to him. Sparks seemed to ignite around her as gunfire was exchanged near her but she was obvious. Everything seemed to move in slow motion now, she couldn't get her bearings. Michonne no longer had any understanding of who was firing at whom and where the bullets were coming from. She was unable to take cover even if she wanted to. She stood still insensible of time or place and sobbed. _Then it all stopped_. The noise of a pitched battle still being waged was suddenly farther away from them. The buildings still burned and gunfire still punctuated the silence but at a distance. It was quiet and all she could hear was Shane's weeping and the crackle of fire as it licked up the walls of all the surrounding buildings.

Yet, Michonne could no longer fully comprehend what was happening. It was all at the periphery of her mind as she looked around seeing bodies strewn everywhere across the field. Justin Barnes lay feet from her, staring at nothing. She'd have thanked God to be among the last people standing if she didn't feel so bereft, so alone, if every body that lay there didn't seem like an individual wound to her person and an indictment of her, personally.

 _All her fault. All this chaos. Because. Of. Her._

Michonne hugged herself and wept uncontrollably until she couldn't breath. Then arms suddenly closed around her from behind, pulling her close to him. He shielded her entire body with his own as if from more gunfire. "Geezus Michonne, what are you doing, trying to get shot?"

 _Carter_.

"My men are out there. We have to get you out of here," He whispered into her ear, hugging her close to his body.

"Maggie—"

Carter swung her around separating her from the agonizing sight of Shane still weeping over Maggie's body. Still, it took a second before she could open her mouth to say anything more. Just then, the sound of grunting pulled her out of her stupor as she looked up into the distance to where they had been hiding behind the jeeps. There, two men grappled in the dirt with each other.

"Rick!" She said emerging immediately from her paralysis to reach out for him.

"No," Carter squeezed her tighter to himself, whispering into her ear. "What's left of my men have the front now, but some of the Saviors escaped into the jungle. We don't know if they called in reinforcements, and we don't know when ours will come. We have to go now. _You need to run_. I've got Rick."

"He needs help—" Michonne begged Carter as he continued to impede her progress, holding her back.

"And _I_ _will_ help him," He promised calmly, cutting her off as she struggled against him and he tightened his grip over her arms. "But I know he'd want me to get you to saf—"

Multiple loud cracks from a rifle rang out nearby and Carter lurched forward on top of Michonne suddenly. They hit the dirt hard with Carter's arms still wrapped around her cushioning some of the impact. He fell heavily on top of her, his face hitting her in the back of her head. She grunted in pain and squirmed trying to disentangle herself from his arms and from under his body.

 _He barely moved._

"Mich," Carter choked out as his breath became labored and reedy above her. He wheezed as blood and saliva leaked from his mouth onto her neck and back.

Michonne wept silently as he tried limply to release her.

"Protect yourself," Carter whispered to her before his whole body shuddered loudly with a death rattle and he expired. Then he was nothing but dead weight pinning her beneath him.

A shadow fell over them as Michonne closed her eyes and played dead.

* * *

Rick drove his elbow for a fourth time down into Dwight's shoulder and the man grunted in pain. Rick had had him hemmed up on his back like a turtle with his vulnerable underbelly exposed. Rick lay on the ground beneath him trying to keep him pinned. Dwight squirmed shouting threats and expletives in French as he struggled with his assailant. He swung his arms wildly at Rick's face, which Rick was able to move his head to evade easily.

"Rick!" He heard Michonne's anguished scream and turned to look. Through the increasingly thick smoke, he could see someone was holding her, standing behind her holding her arms pinned at her sides as she struggled.

 _The second of distraction was all it took._

Dwight attempted to flip over once again as Rick held at his arms, pulling them apart, reducing his leverage...but with Rick's weak shoulder, it was not enough to stop him this time. Dwight contorted his body and swung hard on Rick's chest. He delivered a similarly bruising elbow to Rick's kidney. All the air in Rick's body left in a whoosh. He gasped at the sudden additional pain.

Dwight used Rick's moment of weakness to pull himself completely free. He got to his knees and spun to punch Rick in the face while he still lay supine and wounded. When he tried it again though, Rick blocked the second blow by protecting his face with his crossed forearms then brought his knee up to make contact with Dwight's gonads. The man howled in outrage as Rick scrambled backward on his elbows, trying for a dead man's discarded rifle he'd seen. Rick flipped himself over and scrambled on his hands and knees over to the body, reaching for it before Dwight could gather himself.

Dwight charged him again a second later, lunging for his feet but Rick dragged the gun strap free of the body and turned the rifle on him, just in time.

" _Ça suffit !_ " Rick said halting him, just barely. * _Don't make me kill you!_ * He warned Dwight in his poor French.

Rick struggled to his feet unsteadily, making sure he kept the barrel of the rifle trained on Dwight. He hazarded a quick glance in the direction of Michonne and realized with relief that the man who held her was actually Carter. He looked around while urging Dwight to raise his arms with the rifle point.

Distant, short, isolated bursts of gunfire outside the compound indicated that the fight had spilled over into the countryside. To Rick, Carter's appearance at Michonne's side had to mean that their side had won and driven what remained of the Saviors into the woods. It didn't make any sense, but Rick exhaled nevertheless. According to reports, there were hundreds of Saviors, _where were the rest?_ He wondered if maybe Ezekiel had indeed sent them reinforcements as promised. More than that, he wondered where the big man himself was.

"Where's Neg—"

A sudden, close-by burst of gunfire cut off Rick's question as both he and Dwight reflexively ducked. Rick looked in the direction it was coming from in time to see Carter and Michonne collapse bonelessly into an unmoving heap. Rick flinched, barely fighting the overwhelmingly intense urge to turn his back on Dwight and run directly to her then. Dwight took advantage of the momentary distraction to swat the rifle point away and leap at Rick again. Rick pulled the trigger simultaneously lacking the patience to keep holding Dwight at bay, but the magazine was empty. Dwight fell back a step bracing himself for the shot but the rifle only clicked.

He and Rick glanced at each other then, both sizing each other up, before Dwight reached triumphantly for a red-handled machete that swung from the belt on his hip.

"Oh _fuck_ ," Rick muttered to himself as Dwight advanced on him smiling maniacally. Rick backed up and ducked quickly as Dwight's first slash at him went wide.

He swiped at him again wildly, clearly enjoying the fear in Rick's eyes. _If there was any one thing Rick truly hated in this world, it was large knives and the people who wielded them._ Dwight whipped the cutlass around once expertly with a fluid motion of his wrist, taking his time now to taunt Rick, cat and mouse-style wearing a large grin on his half-melted face. He advanced with great sweeping motions as Rick struggled to back away while keeping 100% of his attention on the large blade slashing at him.

* * *

Shane dropped the rifle and kicked Carter's lifeless body off Michonne's with his boot. "I know now you ain't never gonna die if I don't choke the life outta you myself..."

Shane squatted down, flipped her over and grabbed her clothing by the collar, tightening it around her throat by rolling the fabric in his fist. Michonne remained still despite it beginning to close off her airway.

"...So quit playin' possum," He said strangling her with the fabric.

She opened her eyes then to reach up suddenly and claw at his eyes.

"YOU BITCH!" He screamed startled, punching her chest back into the earth.

She grunted as the force of the blow hit her but her nails marked a large bloody "x" across his face and over his eyelids. He reeled back from her in shock reaching for his rifle. But if they stayed close enough he couldn't use it and Michonne realized that. She reached up and locked her legs around his waist, clinging to him like a feral cat. She mauled him with the jagged nails nearly a week without access to a nail clipper had given her. She bit at his neck and shoulder and he hollered, taken off guard and unprepared for how ferocious she'd become. He punched her brutally again and again in the side until Michonne felt something give internally. She stopped biting him, inhaling painfully, sure he'd broken at least one of her ribs. Nevertheless, she stayed on him.

Shane staggered to his feet with Michonne still clinging to him like something deranged and rabid. She snarled, pulling at his hair and raging like a wild animal as he continued to pummel her sides, attempting to separate them. Finally, Shane reached into the holster on his hip for his handgun, but Michonne saw what he was doing and ground her thumb into the stab wound she'd given him earlier. He howled in pain and the gun dropped to the ground as he lost control of that hand. She pushed her finger into his shoulder until he roared and she felt his tendons beneath the flesh. He dropped, weakened, to one knee in agony. And Michonne, with the last of her reserve and with her thighs and knees locked around his haunches, reared up and drove her elbow straight down into the center of his face. She felt and heard the crunch as she broke his nose badly. Unfortunately, it hurt her elbow and arm as well, the excruciating pain radiated up her arm and down into her fingers. They both crashed onto the ground hard, rolling away from each other spent and bloody.

Michonne gasped desperate for air but convinced she'd broken her arm, cradling it to her chest. She took small panting breaths in exhaustion unable to breathe deeply because of her ribs. She whimpered in pain, willing herself to get up but feeling too weak and exhausted to move at all. She looked to her side and saw Shane still flat on his back, dazed.

 _She had to get up and get to Rick or get away_ , Michonne said to herself but she still couldn't seem to move. Every part of her body hurt, an accumulation of days of abuse. She looked around and saw the gun where Shane had dropped it close-by. _She had to at least get to that._

She rocked herself attempting to gather the momentum to get up off her back and onto her hands and knees. But Shane's eyes opened suddenly, emerging from his daze, blood flowing freely over his face from his nostrils and the large gash on the bridge of his nose back into his ears and hair. He rolled over and pulled himself up faster than she could manage but instead of going for the gun, he fell on her again, his hand closing around her throat.

"I sh-should have done th-this a long time ago," He ground out between gritted teeth as he straddled her and wrung her neck. "I h-h-hate you, bitch!"

Shane's fingers tightened around her windpipe as he strangled her with his good hand, while the other remained virtually limp at his side. But he sat on her thighs to prevent her from moving beneath him. She slapped at his face, balling up her fist and hitting at his temple with one hand as she clawed at the hand around her throat with the other. She wrenched his scalp pulling at his hair as the light around them seemed to dim. However, the pain of that seemed to egg him on, making his hand tighten. Michonne could feel it as his fingers slowly crushed her larynx. She looked around as her eyes rolled around in her head. She could feel that she only had seconds of coherent thought left as the cells began to die. And an odd sense of euphoria settled around her as the oxygen left her brain and her hands loosened in his hair before falling away from his face weakly.

"You killed her, my Maggie!" He shouted furiously into her face, leaning in so that they were nose to nose. He spit his bloody saliva in her face, cursing her and obviously relishing squeezing the life out of her.

For some unknown reason, his scorn was the last jolt Michonne needed, like an injection of epinephrine, she returned fully to what was happening for one last crystal clear moment. She grabbed a handful of dirt and flung it into his eyes, closing her own and turning her face away as he choked on the dust.

"FUCK!" He screeched as it blinded him and he reflexively eased up on her throat to paw at his own face.

She gasped for air, coughing in repeated harsh barks. Then she reached for his gun, abandoned less than a foot away from them in the dirt and hit him as hard as she could squarely in the ear with it. He reeled a little from the blow, just enough for her to rise up and pull herself away a bit.

"No, you killed her, motherfucker." She croaked through her damaged vocal chords as she pistol-whipped him again. A trail of blood ran from his temple into his eye.

Shane opened his bloodshot eyes and lunged for her throat again, raging, incensed by his injury, just as she pulled the trigger. The first shot hit him, she knew but somehow it didn't slow his trajectory. In fact, it seemed to have just made him angrier. He clamped both his large hands around her throat again as Michonne screamed.

"I _will_ kill you, bitch!" He snarled while coughing up blood which lined his teeth as he bared them at her. His momentum drove her onto her back again onto the dirt with him looming over her unhinged. She shot again and he groaned but didn't release her. He shook her neck like a ragdoll while he squeezed as if he meant to also drive her into the earth beneath them as he choked her out.

Again, Michonne felt the air becoming scarce in her lungs and the light fading in and out but she fought it this time, pushing his shoulder back with one hand and pulling the trigger yet again. This time, it hit him square in the chest. He exhaled weakly, his whole body shuddering as his grip loosened until she found she could breathe again.

"Shane," She said pulling the gun up from between their bodies and settling it under his chin. "Get off of me, motherfucker."

He groaned, coughing up blood that splattered her, while gasping for air. But finally he did what she commanded, releasing her. She began to ease from under him when she saw Rick's feet, running their way.

"Shane!" Rick shouted.

Shane heard his friend's voice and turned breathing raggedly to look over his shoulder briefly, then looked back at Michonne with a vile, smug, bloody smile. He grabbed her hand with the gun in it tightly, and closing his finger over hers, he pulled the trigger.

Michonne moaned in revulsion as blood and brain matter rained down on her as his head exploded right in front of her. His body collapsed into her lap with his destroyed head hitting her chest.

* * *

 _Everything seemed to slow down and yet Rick's legs just couldn't move fast enough to catch up._

He was the fastest he'd ever been in his adult life a second earlier, evading Dwight as the idiot swung again and again at him wildly. Dwight's blade had backed him all the way up to the jeep, before he swiped at him yet again and accidentally caught the blade deep in the hood of the car. Then Rick calmly brained him with the butt of his rifle dropping him instantly. Rick exhaled deeply as Dwight crumpled to the ground in front of him. Then he nudged Dwight lightly with a toe to confirm that he was out cold. _He didn't move._

Just then, the muffled sound of a gunshot cut through the silence. Rick spun around searching for the source. He looked over in the distance to see Shane straddling someone on the ground with Carter's prone body feet away. _It was Michonne._ From his vantage point, Rick couldn't see what was happening, other than to see her legs flailing wildly between Shane's as he sat on her. There was another shot and she stopped moving suddenly. Rick dropped the empty rifle and ran toward them. A third shot rang out but he still couldn't see who was shooting whom.

Terrified, he called out, "Shane!" as Michonne finally moved again.

Rick could see her face emerging past Shane's shoulder as she inched from underneath him on her elbows. Then he saw Shane turn his way, and it nearly pulled Rick up short. Shane's face was a mess of scratches and gashes, covered in blood that poured from his nose and hairline and which spoke to the awful truth of what was transpiring between him and Michonne. Rick was horrified and Shane could see it. He turned back to Michonne and a second later there was a fourth and final shot.

Rick saw as a geyser of blood exploded everywhere splattering Michonne. She squealed in repulsion and scrambled out from under Shane on her back frantically. When he got there, Rick grabbed for her and she flinched away from him, looking up at him with unseeing eyes. Michonne moaned as he pulled her to her feet while she clawed at herself and all the blood that covered her.

"Shhhh, shhhh," He whispered, coaxing her into his arms, "Shhhh, now."

He held onto her tightly as she groaned into his shoulder, shaking her head as if to shake the images of carnage loose, "Ohhhhgodohgodohgodohgod…"

"You're alright, shhhh…" Rick said softly to her looking around as he held her to him. They stood alone, in a field of dead bodies. Rick did a mental accounting. With the exception of Dwight, unconscious and most likely concussed, there was no one left alive.

 _...but them_.

 *** E** **nd Note ***

I never do endnotes but there's a first time for everything I guess. Anyhoo, after reading all the wonderful comments over the months and noticing a trend I wanted to take a moment particularly after this chapter to do this:

I know a lot of you took issue with Maggie's loyalty to Shane. How willing she was to continually give him the benefit of the doubt... and I get it. It was frustrating.

Canonically, Maggie is known to be a smart, enthusiastic, loyal and loving daughter, wife, sister and friend to the other members of Team Family. We've gotten to watch her mature on the show into a fierce and analytical leader not afraid to make the hard decisions (and as we've seen lately, apparently hold a grudge). But these things evolved. Like every other (decently-written) character on the show, Maggie has changed from the person she was at the beginning of the show. In the lead-up to writing this story, I rewatched Seasons One-Three again just to reacquaint myself with the characters as they were in the beginning of the ZA. Season One Maggie is not season seven or eight Maggie. And since my story takes place in the beginning stages of an apocalyptic outbreak, those early season characteristics were the ones I chose to focus on. Particularly for Maggie since she doesn't live to see the ZA, I wanted my characterization of her to hew as closely to season two/three Maggie as possible. That Maggie was naive (though she thought she was a hard ass) and fiercely (stupidly - see Hershel's barn of walkers) loyal. That Maggie, if she loved someone would have needed to *see* with her eyeballs the object of her affection doing wrong before condemning him. She was stubborn (as she was when Hershel demanded that she stop seeing Glenn or in taking the group's part when Hershel wanted to kick them off the farm). And she was also occasionally judgmental and a bit myopic (like when she got nasty with Lori after she and Glenn did the run to the pharmacy for her morning-after pills).

That was the Maggie that I modeled my character on. The one who would require more than just the word of (admittedly one of her oldest friends in the world) to write off her fiance or really anyone else she loved. And remember for better or worse, Maggie loves Shane. For her, this is the man who was going to be her husband and the future father of her kids (playing Devil's Advocate I will say Shane thought these things about her also). So, she would never give up on him without knowing for certain that he'd turned the corner. She'd need to see him or talk to him or at the very least see something more concrete. The little solid evidence Rick had was pretty damning, I agree but for Maggie (and honestly a lot more people than are willing to admit it, I think) it takes more than just "evidence" to condemn a loved one. They require incontrovertible proof. All of which to say, Maggie was Shane's Ride or Die...and unfortunately for her, it was the latter.

Thanks for reading my ramblings. 'Til next time.


	64. Chapter 64

* **Author's Note** *

First, thank you so much for your reviews last week! They were stupendous! Really, they were beyond generous and kind. They did my little heart so much good! And really made me feel accomplished. Writing this, a somewhat unconventional Richonne story is not without its trepidations. Would anyone like it, would they get what I was doing? Would anyone stick around til the end? The answer has been a resounding yes, for which I am immensely grateful. That said, I am particularly upset that I'm rewarding all that love with this super duper short chapter. Sorry about that. Blame Memorial Day weekend in the US. I could not focus but I still wanted to give you guys something by Monday morning. This might get something more substantial added to it later (it won't effect what you've already read, it just might be a little more added to it to round the chapter out). If I do choose to do that, it will happen before the Wednesday update so when you return to read Wednesday just check back quickly to see if this chapter is any longer. If not, you'll get the goods next Monday. Thanks for your patience with my occasional folly. I appreciate you guys so much!

8/5/15 03:44 CAT

Medical Station Omicron, Rwanda

"Mind if we slow down a bit?" Michonne said breathlessly, gripping the metal banister to help anchor her. She was trying to keep up but she just couldn't sustain the other woman's fast pace. It got to the point where Michonne felt like Rosita was doing a forced-march up the stairs. Michonne was already a full flight below her, but her injuries wouldn't allow her to move any faster.

"Not this second, Princess. We gotta get upstairs," Rosita said in her usual brusque, slightly exasperated tone.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up for a second," Michonne said sternly pausing on the stairs. "Sgt. Espinosa!"

Rosita stopped, sighed and turned, pausing as requested. She set her mouth and seemed to brace herself for whatever it was Michonne was about to say. It always seemed to Michonne like Rosita could barely tolerate her.

"I know this is new for you. I'm new for you. But I am _not_ a princess. I never said I was and I never asked to be treated like one. So if 'Michonne' is suddenly somehow too difficult for you, then you may call me 'Miss Philippe'."

Rosita sputtered unsure what to say, clearly not expecting to being spoken to that way. "I didn't mean nothing by it, honestly. I didn't even mean to say that to your face."

"Oh, so you guys just call me that behind my back?" Michonne asked feeling more hurt than she would have expected.

Rosita shook her head. "Michonne, you don't get it..."

"I don't." Michonne's jaw tightened with irritation.

The idea that these guys were making fun of her behind her back, it should have rolled off Michonne. She'd gone to an all girls, all-white boarding school for years. She'd have been eaten alive if she hadn't developed a thick skin there. And at this point, she'd also lived a good proportion of her adult-life outside the United States, in situations where she was perpetually the odd-man out. So discovering this should have been nothing to her...but for some reason, it was.

"Listen, to us, Rick's our leader and you're like, like our First Lady. In the military, we give high-value targets and assets codenames. And since we choose to take care of—"

Michonne skewered her with a hard look.

"That is, um, _look out_ for you, we chose to give you a name."

"So you decided to call me ' _Princess_ '?" Michonne asked incredulously.

Rosita nodded her head side to side indicating, 'more or less'.

"What?"

"Well, our codename for you is actually _Princess Peach."_ Rosita threw her hands up defensively. " _It was Jesus' idea_ , after the Super Mari—"

"Yes, _thank you_ , I know who Princess Peach is," Michonne cut Rosita off, miffed. She was now taken aback...but also weirdly flattered.

Michonne didn't know that that was what was going on. She always assumed that they were tolerating her for Rick's sake. It never once occurred to her that they genuinely cared. Or that they looked at her in that way, as a leader. She felt like she asserted herself necessarily but she always assumed they chafed a bit at having to take orders from her. Now she supposed that what Rick had been telling her all along was actually true.

"For the record, I chose to call you 'Princess', everyone else calls you 'Peach'. But I think it reminds me too much of one of the girls that used to work at my club back home," Rosita added with a mischievous grin.

Though Rosita had stopped moving, Michonne had continued up the stairs painstakingly as they talked. At that moment, she'd finally alighted on the landing where Rosita was waiting.

"...Just remember, Sergeant, starting with Super Mario 2 for NES, Princess Peach could protect herself." She looked pointedly at Rosita then nodded before walking on.

"Yes, Ma'am," Rosita replied with a smirk.

They continued on up in a companionable silence until they arrived to the armory level a bit later. Rosita put her hand out suddenly blocking Michonne and telling her wordlessly to remain on the stairs. She put a finger quickly to her mouth, indicating silence. Then she slinked to the stairwell door and peered out the sliver of vertical glass embedded in each door. Rosita fell back quickly, miming that Michonne should too with a sweep of her hand.

Michonne ducked off the landing and leaned against the banister out of sight just as a face filled in the tiny window. She held her breath hoping he wouldn't see her from his vantage point though she could still see him. The soldier looked around with one eye for a moment before walking away.

Since Rosita couldn't tell from her place behind the door, Michonne gave her the all-clear.

"We need a Plan B quick," Rosita said scowling.

"What?" Michonne asked urgently.

"The hall to the atrium is filled with soldiers, cleaning out the room where they're keeping our weapons," Rosita said looking at Michonne as she backed away from the door.

"Oh my God, who?"

"Beats me. I've never laid eyes on any of these guys before," Rosita said hustling Michonne back down the stairs.

* * *

 _8/5/2015 14:47 GMT_

 _Aberdeen International Airport, Dyce, Scotland_

Rick chuckled at the doctor's bluntness. "Doc, is that all I am to you, a lab specimen?"

"Captain Grimes, you know I was against this idea from its very inception. Still, you made an unconventional but very brave argument to be the answer to our very peculiar problem. And to be perfectly honest that makes me think you are either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid. Whichever it is, it makes you a damn sight more to me than a lab specimen. Now stop evading the question and just tell me, how are you feeling? Any symptoms yet?"

Rick looked at the doctor carefully debating whether he was willing to admit it to himself, let alone Morgan that _yes_ , he _was_ beginning to feel symptomatic.

He shook his head. He was convinced he could hold it together a little while longer before Morgan needed to start poking and prodding him. Rick watched the doctor's expression for a moment to see whether Morgan actually bought it. And while he did look at Rick skeptically, he didn't say anything more.

The rest of the walk was uneventful, with the airport appearing exactly how they left it and their plane sitting in the exact place it had been parked before. Rick was thankful. He honestly didn't think he had the energy to deal with another pack. He felt drained and it took real effort to put one foot in front of the other without obviously looking like that was what he was doing. The one small surprise, when it came, was a single errant air traffic control officer, still wearing his yellow vest and wandering around the runway. It was dispatched quickly by Tara with the knife Daryl gave her.

"Trying to impress us," Daryl scoffed as they crossed the tarmac watching her from afar as she hopped up from her position straddling the thing.

"Well, I'll speak for myself then," Morgan admitted. "I was impressed. I don't want to get anywhere near the things."

"It's the best way to get 'em, up-close and personal," Rick explained carefully. "In a populated place, our guns are too loud. They attract attention."

Morgan nodded with understanding. Tara jogged back to the group triumphantly only to get little acknowledgement.

"There she is, my beautiful KC. I swear to God, I'm taking this girl home with me after this shit is all over," Carol said walking up to the plane and patting the side panel like it was a beloved pet. "You folks go get comfortable while she and I freshen up a bit."

Daryl broke off with her to the cockpit door as Rick led Morgan and Tara to the cargo bay.

"Freshen up?" Morgan looked at Rick.

"We told you we had some trouble on the way," Rick said rubbing his arm. "Well, they have to weld a window shut. It shouldn't take more than an hour, though."

Rick attempted a smile but he suspected it didn't work. His mind raced and he had to close his eyes for a second to stop this reeling feeling that swirled around him, in an attempt to focus again.

"This really is a plane," Tara said then astonished, pulling Morgan's attention away just in time. "We really are going to Africa."

"Rwanda," Morgan corrected, turning to look at her. "That is what we said. You aren't getting cold feet are you?"

Tara's eyes widened. "Oh no, it's just, you know, it isn't always real until you see it. Don't worry, I felt the same way about Disney World."

Rick pulled at his collar, it seemed like the temperature, in the last five minutes since they stepped onto the black asphalt, had increased about 50 degrees. His gear was heavier, his clothes were tighter and he was as thirsty as hell. He wanted to grab his canteen but everytime he even thought of water he grew nauseated. He put his hand on the side of the plane then to fight a wave of nausea as it hit him.

"This won't be," Rick started, wiping sweat from his face and watching the cargo bay door as it came down slowly. "Like going to Dis…"

The whole world suddenly seemed like it flipped on its axis. Rick blinked in an attempt to right it but somehow when he opened his eyes it felt worse. He grew more disoriented as his knees wobbled. It was as if the ground was suddenly moving under his feet.

"Rick?" Tara said alarmed as he staggered into her accidentally.

"I'm, I'm okay," He lied nearly gagging. Rick blinked again, feeling like his legs were coming up from under him. He was lightheaded and so damned hot. His arm ached and itched intensely too.

"Rick? Bloody hell, Rick!" Rick heard Morgan call to him from far away.

Rick felt someone shaking him. He opened his eyes again to see Morgan and Tara looking down on him. _Was he on the ground?_ He couldn't make sense of what was happening. Even flat on his back the world was still swirling. He blinked as the lights went out.

 _Fuck_.

* * *

 _Rick was burning up._

 _It was so hot, he could feel the sun's rays practically flaying his skin as he lay on his back staring up into a magnificently blue sky. Pin pricks of sweat covered every inch of him. He sat up on his elbow shaking, dying for something to drink._

" _W-w-water," He strangled out. For some reason, the words were coming with difficulty._

"He's asking for something to drink," A voice repeated.

"Go ahead and give it to him. Hold his head so he doesn't choke." A different voice said.

"You want something to drink? Here."

 _A hand held his head gently and put the cup to his lips. The water wasn't cold but he was hardly in a position to complain. He drank greedily, insatiable, worried that the cup would empty before his thirst was slaked._

" _Where am I?," He looked around confused as he pushed the cup away from his mouth finally satisfied._

" _Dragon beach in Dakhla," The voice answered. "Remember?"_

 _Rick looked up but couldn't make out the face, backlit by the blinding sunshine. He squinted to try and make it out._

" _Michonne?" Rick looked around at nothing but white sand for miles, then back up at her. "Morocco?"_

" _Do you remember?" She asked as he sat up and was finally able to see her face._

 _She looked beautiful. Her smooth ebon skin glowed in the sun's rays. And a fine sheen of moisture covered her giving her whole body a supple, slickly oiled look. Tiny errant grains of white sand dotted her as they clung to the sweat that covered her. She wore her long locs cascading over one shoulder and the gold charms and cowrie shells she adorned it with shined as she moved. A small colorful bracelet that she'd bought from one of the children in town slid up and down her slender wrist._

" _Do you remember?" She asked again, caressing his forehead lightly as if to jog his memory. She ran her fingers through the moist curls at his temple. He closed his eyes for a moment to enjoy her feathery touch._

 _He reached for her hand but somehow she evaded his grasp. "Remember what?"_

" _Remember this, Rick," She laughed and looked over her shoulder. Suddenly, a glittering turquoise ocean emerged from behind her. She put her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun's relentless glare. As she moved, it gave him an unobstructed view beyond her shoulder._

 _He looked out past her toward the horizon line but it was hard to make out where the crystal blue water ended and the sky began. "Yes."_

" _You and Shane went kite-surfing."_

" _We tried. We spent most of the time in the water."_

 _Michonne laughed and leaned back propping herself up with her hands in the sand behind her. Rick looked down at that yellow crocheted bikini she wore. He recalled suddenly how he had had so much difficulty taking his eyes off her in that thing. The bright color of the flimsy two piece accentuated her sinewy muscles, ample hips and taut stomach. She sat up briefly to run a hand slowly over her arm to brush off some of the sand and gently push her locs off her shoulder. The charms tinkled melodiously as Rick drank her whole body in._

" _I wanted you so bad."_

" _Now, now...I said remember, not reinvent," She laughed at him and Rick's stomach flipped. He had always loved her laugh._

" _You and your friend Bertie were lucky we were there with you. Once you took off your t-shirts, the locals would not leave you two alone. Shane and I thought we were going to have to fight somebody."_

" _It was a modest country, I don't know what I was thinking wearing this." She looked down at her own lithe, gorgeous body and then smiled brilliantly, looking back up at him. "I vowed never to take wardrobe advice from Andrea ever again."_

" _Then I owe Andrea an apology for every mean thing I've ever said about her."_

" _Do you remember, we played flag-football until sunset," She ignored his comment._

" _Until Lori cut her foot on a shell in the sand." Rick shook his head. "I had to carry her on my back almost a half mile to the hotel."_

" _You were so gallant, that was one of the first things I ever liked about you." Michonne took his hand and put it on her chest._

 _Her body was surprisingly cool to the touch. He ran his hand along the curve of her breast, over her shoulder, up her neck until he was cradling her face in his large palm._

" _I love you," He whispered, looking at her adoringly._

 _Michonne just smiled in reply, covering his hand with her own._

" _Rick, do you remember?" She asked yet again._

 _Rick nodded. "I do. I remember."_

 _Michonne squeezed his fingers. "Good, because you're the only one left that will."_

 _Her fingers tightened around his until it grew painful. Rick tried to pull his hand free just as Michonne started to convulse. He grabbed the other side of her face in his hands cradling her head as her entire body shook._

" _Michonne?" He cried._

 _Her mouth started to froth as her arms and legs flailed wildly, kicking up sand. Her eyes were shut tightly._

" _MICHONNE!" He repeated frantically._

 _Her eyes opened instantly then and it was as if he had been hit by a lightning bolt transmitted straight from her to him. Rick began to convulse too. He dropped her head, collapsing onto the sand right beside her and shook. It felt like his brain was on fire. The pain burned across his irises until his eyes rolled up into the back of his head._

"Roll him onto his side. Tara, hold his head!"

Rick could hear the directions but couldn't see anyone. His body jerked as something akin to wild electrical current coursed through him. He couldn't speak, he could barely breathe and his muscles spasmed painfully, all of them, it felt like. Every single one in his body seemed to have a mind of its own, tensing repeatedly, painfully to an arrhythmic pace set by a brain in open rebellion.

Then finally, it stopped.

Rick gasped, finally able to take a deep breath.

"I warned you lot this is what would bloody well happen!" Someone who sounded like Morgan was shouting. "What if he wakes up and can't remember his own flippin' name, huh?"

"What then?"

"Hey?" Tara leaned in whispering over his ear. "Hey, Captain, can you hear me?"

It took considerable effort but Rick nodded. He didn't know the last time he felt so tired... _which was saying something._

"Captain, what's your name?"

"R-Richard James Grimes," He said breathlessly, still panting, still shaky and still somewhere in the twilight between consciousness and not.

"See there, Doc," Daryl Dixon said patting Rick on the back and gently easing him into a supine position. "Problem solved. And we still have two hours till we land."

* * *

8/5/15 04:05 CAT

Medical Station Omicron, Rwanda

"Rosita, wait a minute, wait a minute! What did you mean you've never seen them before?"

Rosita tried to shoo Michonne further down the stairs but she stood her ground.

"I don't recognize them but I don't care," Rosita answered off-handedly. "Who gives a shit?"

"You don't care but I do," Michonne answered. "We've met all Ngangabouka's men. How are there new ones now?" She looked up at Rosita for an answer.

"Who says they're new? I mean, I don't know, maybe they were hiding in the closets or something."

Michonne frowned. There had been a running joke going around about the fact that there were a ridiculous number of closets in the facility, suggesting that maybe they were doorways to other dimensions.

Michonne sighed at Rosita's decision to be willfully obtuse.

"Be serious. Where would new people have come from?"

Rosita sighed back in exasperation. "Why do you even care, Michonne?"

"Because this is the _exact_ way Eugene said Ngangabouka's people got in the first time."

"They snuck in? I doubt that."

"No, Ariane let them in," Michonne explained. "She worked here, on staff. So she just set off the alarms, which initiated a lockdown and let them in.

"That was the way they got in without the security staff stopping them," Michonne divulged the content of her and Glenn's conversation with Dr. Porter.

"You'd still have to do better than that to get all the way downstairs."

"Not when you have a reason to be let in. Not if someone has locked the infected in with the healthy." Michonne thought about it. "If you had guns, they'd welcome you in with open arms."

Eugene hadn't told her this part but she cobbled his version together with Ngangabouka's. _The rotting bodies in the field, the way everyone was afraid of Ariane._ Lerner made a deal with the Devil. She let them in to control an outbreak in the facility. One Ariane quite possibly deliberately created. Suddenly, Michonne had another thought.

"Geezus Christ," Michonne thought about the men Rosita saw grabbing guns upstairs. "We've got to get to our people. What if she's decided to do it again?"


	65. Chapter 65

* **Author's Note** *

The last flashback chap. It's a long one...

May 11th 2011

Savior Camp (Approximately 45 km outside Nord Kivu, DRC)

Michonne's whole body trembled. She couldn't seem to get it to stop and she felt cold, so cold.

"Michonne?" Rick called to her even though she was in his arms. He pulled a small dirty rag from his pocket and wiped her face. "Michonne, honey, can you hear me?"

She looked up at him and nodded. Her ears were ringing from the gunshots. It made him sound far away as his voice competed with an incessant tinny whine to be heard.

"We have to get out of here before anyone else comes."

She nodded again. She understood. They weren't safe.

She looked down at the ground at Shane's destroyed body and gagged. She spun around and emptied her meager stomach contents at her feet. Pure perversity spurred her to look again but Rick grabbed her by the upper arm and turned her away.

"You okay?"

"Yes," she said but gagged again at the sight of the pure carnage that surrounded her. Carter lay on his side feet away. A few yards back Justin's body was splayed out still leaking blood and looking sightlessly toward the sky. Not to mention the unnamed other soldiers of Ngangabouka's that littered the field. It was horrific. Michonne gagged again and again but nothing came.

"Alright, alright," Rick coaxed, rubbing her back as if she was an infant.

Another report of gunfire made Michonne look up suddenly startled.

"We gotta go," He whispered into her ear as he held her. Rick hurried her toward the bullet-pocked Range Rover. The door was open and the engine was still running. "C'mon."

Michonne resisted. "Maggie and Samir and Carter."

Rick looked at her frowning, clearly doing some sort of mental arithmetic in his head before nodding. "Okay."

He took off the rifle over his shoulder throwing it onto the driver's seat, opened the back door and came back to Maggie. She was crumpled on the ground where Shane had left her.

"I need your help," He said urgently and Michonne moved to take Maggie's feet. Tears streamed down Michonne's face as she dealt with the body's dead weight. Michonne's arms and legs felt weak suddenly like she couldn't support the weight. She felt faint, unable to hold up her side as Rick strained with his.

"You can't do this right now, 'Chonne," Rick said gently. "You gotta be sad on your own time!"

Michonne looked up at him startled by his callousness.

"Think whatever you want after we get them in the car but right now I need you to fucking lift!"

It was what she needed to snap out of it. She hoisted her friend's feet up and helped him carry her to the car. It took considerable effort for them both to get her into the back seat and Michonne cried throughout.

As she turned to go attend to Carter, Rick pulled her to him quickly. "I'm sorry."

Michonne shook her head, "It's okay. Like you said, let's just do this."

She could feel the shocked, frayed, raw parts of herself hardening over, calcifying so that she could do what had to be done. It was the part of her that took off her mourning dress the day of her mother's funeral and began packing up their things in preparation for the move to her grandmother's house. It was the part of her that helped her do all the hard things in her life, that helped her pivot so effortlessly whenever life had thrown a door closed in her face.

She shook Rick off and moved toward Carter quickly. Walking over to him stoically, she looked at his face. The face, she realized belatedly, of a man that had loved her. She thought of the dinner she'd had with him not long ago and her heart lurched at the prospect of having to face Francine. Francine would be inconsolable. She had confided in Michonne that she thought they were getting close to a proposal. Michonne hadn't had the nerve to tell her she didn't think so. Now it didn't matter. Michonne's eyes grew moist again as she closed Carter's.

"ARIANE!" Michonne looked up to see the girl running between buildings. She stopped when she heard her name looking around for the source. When she saw Michonne and Rick, her expression changed to something unreadable. Then just as quickly she began to cry and ran to Michonne.

Rushing into her arms, Ariane hit Michonne's body hard, squeezing her tightly. Michonne groaned and cringed in pain.

"You are hurt," Ariane said pulling away and looking Michonne over.

"Where have you been?" Michonne shook her by her arms. "Are you okay? Where's your brother?"

Again, she fixed Michonne with a strange almost blank stare for just a moment before crying, "We were hiding in the kitchen, come help me look."

She grabbed Michonne's wrist trying to pull her along.

"Michonne," Rick spoke finally from his place kneeled in front of Carter. He'd closed his legs and crossed his arms preparing him for transport. "I'm sorry. We don't have the time."

But then, he gave Ariane a look. "You were with him in the _kitchen_?" He asked her as if he was just catching up with the conversation.

They exchanged a look rife with mutual suspicion. Michonne remembered suddenly that Ariane was not Rick's favorite person. She put her arm around the girl to show him her support for her physically.

"We heard the men coming and hid in the pantry," She began to cry. "I was so scared."

She hugged Michonne turning her face away from Rick.

"Michonne, we don't have time," He repeated urgently, his face beseeching her.

She took Ariane by the arms and looked at her. "We will take you with us. We can get you to your family. To the people of your village."

Michonne remembered where that meant but still thought it preferable to here. Ariane looked at her then down at Rick before nodding slowly.

"But come help me find Fabian too," Ariane pulled Michonne's arm. "I think he ran toward the pasture."

"Michonne," Rick said again, his voice a warning this time.

Michonne felt torn but again, improbably, it was François and Shane's words that came to her.

 _No one cares about you here._

"Honey, we have to go. Come with us," Michonne coaxed. She could see the indecision in Ariane's face mixed with something else.

"'Chonne," Rick said once more with a mix of exasperation and pleading.

"Okay," She acquiesced moving quickly to him and Carter.

"On three," Rick was saying to her when she looked up at him.

His shoulder was bleeding again from the strain, she noticed as she looked across at him. She'd have to tighten his belt again, she said to herself while reaching under Carter's shoulders to lift him. Ariane rushed to them, helping from Michonne's side.

*Ngangabouka will skin you both alive! And I can't wait to help him do it!*

They all looked up and saw Dwight staggering clumsily to his feet in the distance. He looked as if he was drunk, stumbling and falling before getting back up. Rick turned, looking over his shoulder.

" _Merde_ ," Ariane cried.

"C'mon! We gotta hurry," Rick said to them turning back to Carter's feet.

Dwight walked to the nearest body, listing heavily to one side as blood ran from his eyebrow into his face. *He will burn you to cinder for this!* He screeched in French.

Michonne watched him curiously wondering what he was doing as he searched the body.

"One, two, three!" Rick said as they lifted Carter off the ground and struggled to get him to the car.

Finally, Michonne, unable to keep her eyes off him figured out what Dwight was doing.

"Let him go!" Michonne said dropping Carter's body unceremoniously. Ariane nearly fell forward from the weight. "He's getting a new magazine for a gun!"

Rick did as instructed while turning to see behind him. Just as Michonne had said Dwight was laboring with one good eye to get the magazine into a rifle he'd salvaged amongst the bodies.

"C'mon!" Rick ran up to Michonne and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her toward the truck as her eyes remained trained on Dwight tracking his progress. Ariane trailed behind them.

Rick first pushed the girl into the car as she squealed in horror at finding Maggie's body already inside. He then slammed the backseat door behind her and pushed Michonne in through the driver's seat. As she climbed over the gear shift, Rick ran back to Justin Barnes and wrestled the pack off his body, just as the first bullets started to fly. Michonne watched from the front passenger seat as Rick ducked low and ran back to the car.

"Keep your head down!" He shouted at them climbing into the car. He tossed her Barnes' pack. "See if there's an extra mag in there for the rifle."

Michonne did as he instructed as Rick reversed then spun the car out of the field with Dwight staggering behind them firing. The back windows blew out as they drove away. Ariane screamed, cowering in the back seat. Rick pushed the remnants of the front windshield out as he drove, leaving the entire vehicle windowless. Michonne looked through Justin's pack for a mag and to her surprise found two, along with a handgun and a small first aid pouch.

"Keep your head down," Rick directed her sharply as the car careened side to side as he took on the rough terrain.

Michonne hugged her knees and prayed as the car sped forward. She could hear Ariane moaning in the back. The car came to a sudden stop and she flew forward before Rick's arm could brace her. Her face hit the dashboard hard.

"C'MON!" Rick screamed out the window before turning to her and apologizing. "Probably should put on your seat belt."

He popped the hatchback and Michonne watched as three Trippies scrambled into the car via the trunk. They pulled up a gravely injured fourth carried by the fifth. When they were all in, the car surged forward before the liftgate was properly closed again.

"NO, NO!" Ariane cried as they tumbled inside with their gear.

"Ariane! Calm down!" Michonne said as Ariane shouted in a nearly indecipherable Swahili-French hybrid.

" _Mercí,_ " The soldiers all took turns telling them urgently paying little mind to the squawking girl except to look at her.

"How many of you are left?" Rick asked over her shouting.

"Ariane, Ariane!" Michonne reached over her seat to grab her. There were too many things happening in one small car as Rick struggled to control it on the uneven terrain.

"Get her to calm down!" Rick directed Michonne as he still tried to talk to the Trippies.

Michonne skewered him with a look that luckily he didn't see for stating the ridiculously obvious. She grabbed the girl's arms as she flailed trying not to look over at Maggie slumped against the opposite door jostling lifelessly with every bump they encountered.

 _It was too much._

" _Tais-toi!_ " Michonne shouted as she hauled back and smacked Ariane across the face. The crack of her hand meeting flesh made all sound cease in the car.

Ariane stopped. The Trippies talking amongst themselves, stopped. No one spoke for a long moment in astonishment. Rick hazarded a quick surprised look in her direction. Ariane clutched her face in shock.

The Trippies whispered nervously to each other. Apparently, no one of them spoke English well enough to understand Rick's question but they all feared to get what Ariane got for not answering him.

*How many of you are left?* Michonne repeated the question calmly in French.

*Left? We are about 50 here now.* One Trippy replied.

Michonne turned back to face the front. She was unable to look at Ariane, who still clutched the side of her face and glared at her, any longer. So she busied herself tending to Rick's shoulder, pulling bandages from the bag.

*There are fifty of you?* She asked absently as she placed the gauze under his shirt and he winced in pain.

"Sorry," She whispered to him as she tightened the belt strap and he groaned.

"I'd tell you to keep your hands to yourself but I wouldn't want you to hit me," He said to her under his breath and she scoffed not enjoying his attempt at humor.

"Fifty?" Rick looked at the Trippies through the rear-view mirror.

"We had a much smaller force," He intimated to her.

*The general sent reinforcements as soon as the first explosion hit. Before they even got Christoph back to base he sent another 40 men* The soldier talking was smiling so widely that Michonne could see his teeth even in the dimly lit car.

"What's he sayin'? Something about Ezekiel sending more guys? Does he know when they're comin'?" Rick asked keeping his eyes ahead and grunting low in his throat as she ministered to his wounds.

"He's already sent them," Michonne translated as the soldier continued to explain. "Ezekiel saw Maggie's 'fireworks' and villagers started reporting the sounds of gunfire in the hills."

"No wonder," Rick said as if his questions were answered.

"No wonder, what?" Michonne asked looking at the side of his face. Her busy hands stilled, waiting for him to explain.

"No wonder we made it out of the compound," Rick answered.

Michonne looked around finally. It was true. _She hadn't even realized it_. They were outside the camp. The single thing she'd thought about obsessively for four days...and she hadn't even noticed. The sporadic sound of gunfire they still heard was actually up in the hills and far away from their current location. They were alone, deep in the jungle at the foot of the mountains, bouncing around on something that could only euphemistically be called a road, in the dark. She looked behind them and could see the warm red and yellow glow of the compound engulfed in flames in the distance. They'd cleared the gates and she hadn't seen it. It felt surreal like she'd been trapped there forever. It felt hard to fathom that she was actually finally free of its walls.

"Wait! Stop the car!" She said and before it had even come to a full stop, she swung her door open, leaned out and retched again.

Tears poured down her face as she fell out of the truck into the dirt sobbing loudly. There was nothing left in her stomach to throw up so it was painful and dry but she kept heaving and crying. She was on the verge of hyperventilating, her body wouldn't stop until she felt Rick's soothing hand on her back.

"'Chonne, shhh," He said softly holding her shoulders and crouching beside her. "I'm okay and you're okay."

She nodded, falling heavily against his body, and wept.

" _Hé, Mademoiselle_!" The Trippies suddenly shouted into the darkness, standing by the back of the truck. *Where are you going? It's dangerous out there!*

Michonne and Rick looked up and saw the back passenger door was open. Michonne jumped to her feet wiping her tears.

"ARIANE!"

 _But Ariane was gone._ She'd taken off into the bush. The Trippies pointed into the trees when Michonne looked to them for direction. She began to go after her before Rick caught her by her arm stopping her.

"Michonne, let her go," Rick said pulling her close. "Let her go."

"She's just a girl!" Michonne cried, new tears forming in her eyes.

"There are still Saviors in the trees. We don't know when or if Negan is sendin' more. We can't stop to look for her, 'Chonne. We just can't," Rick whispered into her ear.

She looked at him. By the light of the car headlights, he looked awful. Bloody and battered, he was barely holding it together himself. Michonne realized then she didn't have the right to ask any more of him.

"He'll be looking for her too," Rick reminded her. "It'll just put a target on our back."

"Why did she run?" Michonne asked herself more than him.

"It's a good thing," Rick said under his breath then whistled for the Trippies who had ventured out a few yards into the darkness to try and locate her.

Michonne looked at him harshly.

" _Allons-y!_ " He called to the guys, oblivious of her darkening mood. The Trippies came back and piled into the car as directed.

They drove in silence for a while with Michonne leaning against the door, breathing in the hot, humid jungle air. After a while, she could no longer hear the sporadic report of gunfire that had been the birdsong of the evening. The incessant ringing in her ears eased as well, giving her a semblance of peace. She closed her eyes and tried her damnedest to forget that there was a dead body in the back seat. And the fact that the dead body belonged to one of her best friends in the world. She tried also not to think of the bodies they'd had to leave behind. She wiped silent tears away from her cheeks roughly, angry with herself for not being stronger, for not being clever enough to find her own way out before it came to this, for not being able to shake whatever these feelings were off faster. She was free, just as she wished for, just as she'd envisioned...but at what immense cost to everyone around her?

* * *

Headquarters of _Patrouille Patriotique Populaire du Congo_ , Nord Kivu, DRC

It was raining lightly as Michonne waited with Rick on the tiny helipad Ezekiel kept behind his headquarters. He'd been in touch with USAfriCOM and they were sending a helicopter to transport them back to Kisangani. It was only a five-hour drive, three hundred mile trip but the powers that be wanted them back immediately. So, they were willing to foot the bill for the two-hour flight. Apparently, coming, it had taken Carter one very short call to requisition the flight. Going back, it had been an hour on the phone, while Michonne watched Rick primarily nod and "Mmm-hmm" his way through a conversation to get the necessary permissions to have the ride back home.

Michonne lifted her head up and let the light rain droplets mist her face. She wasn't sure she would ever take the freedom of that for granted ever again. She couldn't even bear to sit indoors as they waited on the helicopter to arrive. She preferred to sit out back behind the building and wait. Rick had been nice enough to sit with her but she would have been just as content to sit there alone.

"Matt is expecting a full debrief when we get back," He said suddenly after sitting beside her in complete silence for at least forty-five minutes.

Michonne opened her eyes then and looked down as Rick raked his fingers through his hair and placed his head in his hands. His entire body exuded a crushing fatigue.

"What are you going to tell them?" Michonne asked.

Rick lifted his face out of his palms and looked at her. "What do you mean? I'm gonna tell them the truth, every horrible bit of it. I hope Carter can get a medal out of it. I certainly won't."

Michonne's heart skipped a beat. She hadn't thought about it, not for one second until just then. _What the hell were they going to tell people?_

She turned to Rick suddenly and he perked up, sitting up straight surprised by the change. "You can't do that!" She told him urgently.

"Do you hear me, Rick? You can't tell them what really happened!"

Rick scoffed, nearly laughing at her earnestness. She could see how the smile played at the corners of his lips like he thought she was pranking him.

"Listen to me, Shane rigged this whole thing to fall back into your lap if he was found out." She grabbed his hand and squeezed to emphasize her point.

Rick looked at her like he was trying to decipher the words coming out of her mouth. Michonne told him about Carl's account then. She told him about how Lori was a signatory and how Shane had tricked him into signing all sorts of things he didn't know about. Michonne told him about Aarav then.

Rick jumped up from the bench they sat on under the old awning of the building. He paced and dragged his hands through his hair. Michonne worried he was about to tear it out at the root.

"Rick, calm down," Michonne said to him softly.

She looked around as she spoke. She needed to keep this conversation between just the two of them. Working Rick into a lather about it would completely defeat the purpose. She reached out to him trying to bring him back to the bench. He resisted a little longer pacing before he stopped and looked at her. She could tell he wanted to rage, but to what end? The offending parties were dead.

"Come sit." She coaxed.

"What the fuck was Lori thinking?" He said loudly.

"Shhh," Michonne said trying to get him to settle down. "Come."

She reached out again, trying to soothe him.

Finally, he came and sat putting his head back into his palms. He breathed deeply trying to find his center, while she rubbed his back. It was a complete role-reversal from earlier. The fact of that wasn't lost on Michonne. And it was just as crucial to their lives that Rick listened to _her_ now and did what _she_ said.

He sighed heavily like he was slipping the weight of the world off his shoulders. "I'm just gonna tell Matt and Stavros everything and see what happens."

Michonne fixed him with a glare, marking him as the most foolish man she'd ever encountered, that he luckily missed. "No."

He looked up at her again, the question all over his face, "What do you mean, no?"

"Rick, you'll go to jail. Lori will go to jail. Carl will either go into foster care or be raised by Lori's parents."

"You don't know that," He retorted.

"Rick, these are not worst case scenarios. This is what _will_ happen, I promise you."

Rick turned his head back into his palm. "That motherfucker," he muttered into his hands

"There's no point in that anymore." She whispered, leaning into him, feeling remarkably beatific about it all considering she'd just shot Shane four times a few hours ago. Michonne nearly chuckled at the irony of it. Clearly, the fatigue was making her punchy. She vacillated wildly between a near euphoria and a horror and distress that made her want to lie down on the ground and never get up again.

"What do I do. I can't let Lori go to jail. What do I do?"

He looked up at her and Michonne felt her stomach sink. She put her chin on her hand over his shoulder, but that was all she dared. All she really wanted to do was pull him to her and hold him until everything was over. All of this. All this chaos and carnage for her. If she had only let it go, none of this would have happened. The recrimination ran on a loop in her head. Maggie, Carter, Samir, half a dozen Trippies at the least, would all still be alive if not for her... And all that destruction for what? So that she could be right? So that she could prove that Shane really was a bad guy? For what? For Maggie? Now Maggie was dead. Now only she and Rick were left. It all felt so hollow and unnecessary. The guilt was nearly intolerable. So, if in the next few minutes she couldn't convince Rick to do what was in his best interests, if only for her if not himself, then this thing would never be done claiming victims. Its reach would be long and catastrophic –even Carl and Shane's old grandmother in the nursing home in Georgia would be collateral damage once that incriminating bank account surfaced. How many lives would be threatened because of her?

"Lie." She said simply. "Lie about everything."

* * *

May 18th 2011

Tshopo Arrondissement (Commune), Kisangani, DRC

Rick knocked on the door awkwardly with his good arm while holding the over-large bouquet in his bad one. Suddenly, he reconsidered the whole "flowers" thing. _Did it look like he was trying too hard?_ Piqued by intense feelings he couldn't easily identify, he'd asked the local flower merchant for the largest arrangement the seller had and then he doubled it. Now Rick could barely see much past his own nose and was having difficulty negotiating the armful of flowers. What would Michonne, who was not nearly his size, do with this monstrosity he'd brought her?

He sighed, looking around himself unsuccessfully for a place he could stash the idiotically grandiose bouquet just when the door opened.

"It's a flower delivery," The person on the other side of the door that he couldn't actually see announced. The voice was familiar but not Michonne's. "Come in, put them down over there while I get my purse."

Realizing he was effectively blind, she quickly took him by the crook of his elbow and led him over to the dining table before walking away. Rick placed the bouquet on the table carefully and looked around. Several other surfaces were covered in assortments of flowers as well.

 _It was a stupid idea._

He should have guessed, even he had gotten a condolence bouquet from Stavros' wife Athena. He reached out then and took the card from the closest one, there on the same table. As he guessed, it was Michonne's from the Xenakis family.

He slipped the card back into its holder beside the blooms and looked up just as someone was exiting the kitchen.

"Ooo, those are nice!" Amy said about the flowers while wiping her hands in a kitchen towel. She looked up from the table then at who had brought them. "Oh Rick!"

Her eyes widened and she came to him quickly, pulling into her embrace.

"Amy," He replied simply but returned her warm hug.

It had only been seven days since they'd seen each other last but for Rick, it felt like eons ago. He definitely felt as if he'd lived an entire lifetime since then though Amy looked just the same.

"Oh my god, what are you _doing_ here? How are you feeling?" She asked releasing him and then putting a hand to his cheek gently.

She peered into his face in a way that wasn't strictly sympathetic. He watched as her eyes scanned him, looking over his bruises in the analytical manner of a doctor examining a patient...assessing him. She was asking in more than the usual perfunctory way. It suddenly made a lot more sense why Clara had had so much time on her hands to so obnoxiously play nursemaid to him for the past few days. Michonne already had her 'round the clock medical care covered.

"I'm on the mend," He answered diplomatically. "I'm ta—"

"Aim, I don't have any francs, can you tip th—" Andrea cut him off to announce unaware of his presence and walking back into the room as she riffled through her purse. She stopped speaking abruptly though when she saw it was Rick standing there.

"Oh _Rick_ ," She said as if stating a fact. And her expression was as if she'd discovered the milk in her coffee had soured.

Andrea came to halt and regarded him without continuing. Rick noted to himself for the millionth time again how different the Harrison sisters were. Though they looked like younger and older versions of the same person, at that moment, he marveled at how different the same words could sound in two different mouths. How laden with concern it could be from one while simultaneously burdened by the judgment of another. And that was just his name. He couldn't _wait_ to hear what else Andrea had to say.

"What are _you_ doing here?"

 _There was that difference again._

"I came to see Michonne," He answered though he thought that was fairly self-explanatory considering they were in her apartment.

Though she didn't say anything, he could see Andrea closing down. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. Normally, this display, particularly from Andrea Harrison put Rick on the back foot. He didn't like arguing in general and Andrea specifically wasn't someone he enjoyed mixing it up with. In fact, in the years he'd known her, he avoided it. It had only been Shane with his odd courtship rituals and adversarial proclivities that found that to be in any way interesting or desirable. But Rick had just heard from Clara that Michonne's transfer back to the States had come through. He meant to see her before she left.

Up until then, he'd been keeping his distance as Michonne apparently wanted. Working and coming home and wanting nothing so much as to see her and speak to her but obeying her wishes instead. It ended, however, when Clara appeared at his front door that morning to inform him that Michonne's Notification of Final Departure had been approved. That meant she would be leaving imminently and this might be the last chance they had to speak. Given that, he wasn't about to be deterred...by Andrea or anyone else, including possibly Michonne herself.

"She's not seeing anybody, Rick." Andrea's bright blue eyes narrowed, fixing him with an ice cold glare that would have eviscerated him if it could have.

"He's hardly 'anybody', Drea," Amy interjected then. "He's the reason she's even here. He sav—"

"Michonne has herself and her own ingenuity to thank as much as me for her escape," Rick corrected her modestly, shaking his head.

"Of that, I'm fairly certain," Andrea added snidely. "All you did is very narrowly avoid causing an international incident."

"Drea!" Amy chastised her lightly.

"It's okay, Amy." Rick didn't even want her to bother. Though the full investigation wouldn't be over for months, it already looked as if Rick would be censured for his actions. This was hardly the worst he had to look forward to in the near future.

"That was Carter's decision, _he_ asked Rick to help _him_ ," Amy said following the script that Michonne had apparently given her.

Rick didn't know how she'd managed it, since as far as he knew Michonne had barely left these four walls in a week but everywhere investigators went so far in their inquiry, people were already telling the version of events exactly as he and Michonne had fed it to Stavros and Matt. Apparently, even Amy had fallen in line.

" _Right_ ," Andrea responded pointedly. She cut another look at Rick then that said unequivocally that she wasn't one of the people who'd gotten the sanitized version.

"Look, is she here?" Rick said with a sigh already fatigued with Andrea.

"She said she doesn't want to see anyone," Andrea repeated angrily. "And you _are_ anyone, contrary to what my sister thinks."

"Drea, weren't we going to get Mich some boxes? We told her we'd get them today so she could start packing up," Amy said going and putting her hand on sister's forearm.

Andrea looked at her sister in surprise as Amy grabbed her arm and pulled her reluctantly out of the way. They exchanged some words under their breath before Andrea relented with a sigh of her own. She walked over to the front door and waited.

"Take a seat. She's in the bedroom, sleeping I think. I'll tell her you're here." Amy pat Rick's arm before heading back toward where Michonne's bedroom was.

Rick nodded then but didn't sit down watching Amy go up the short hall and disappear into the dark room.

"So, did you call Dale?" Andrea spoke up suddenly from her place, fuming by the front door.

Rick turned and looked at her askance.

"Where do you think Michonne got his name from?" Andrea asked smugly. "You think Michonne just has lawyers like him in her Rolodex?"

 _Now he didn't_.

The truth was, Rick had absolutely _no idea_ where Dale Horvath had come from. Michonne had left him a message two days ago with a phone number. Rick had obediently called it and the next thing he knew, he had a lawyer from a white shoe, multinational but New York-based law firm on retainer. Dale would not even discuss his payment with Rick. He only gave Rick two instructions: To, one, instruct Lori to pass along all the information she had about Shane and Carl's incriminating bank account on to him and two, not to speak to anyone further about any of the events of the last week without him or a representative from his firm present. He'd even assured Rick that someone from their Johannesburg branch could fly up to Kisangani at a moment's notice, if needed. Still, despite that, to that very minute, Rick didn't know what precisely Dale was doing for him but he continued to follow Dale's instructions only because Michonne had asked him to.

"I guess not," Rick responded before continuing, "Thank you, Andrea. Me and my family thank you."

"Look, Rick, I really don't give a shit about your family, no offense."

Rick frowned too surprised to retort.

"...But Michonne does. _Very much so_ ," She said as if baffled by that idea. "And for that reason, I'm gonna provide you with as much help as I can. You just do what Dale says and you and your wife and son will be fine. But don't, _not even for one second_ , you think that that makes you and me square."

Rick was stunned. While Andrea was never one of his favorite people, their relationship was never anything less but cordial. Yet there was no mistaking that he'd just made a new enemy.

"Look, Andrea, I don't know who you think I am—"

"I know _exactly_ who and what you are, birds of a feather and all that, but Michonne buys the bullshit that you had no possible idea what Shane was up to."

"I didn't!" Rick retorted actually getting angry now.

"Sure Rick, I'm _very_ sure. He was only your best friend, and no one is left standing to tell the tale but somehow you wind up a very rich man."

"I don't want a fuckin' penny of that money!" Rick struggled to control himself remembering this was why he didn't like squaring off against Andrea. Her conversational style was take-no-prisoners and her interpersonal philosophy was scorched earth.

Rick took a breath and reminded himself then that this was not why he came here today.

"Well, more's the pity for you then, isn't it?" Andrea made a face dripping with both scorn and mockery. "Poor, poor thing, stuck with all that _cash_."

"I—"

"We'll be back in a little bit," Amy announced appearing suddenly right beside Rick and getting on to her tiptoes to give him a quick kiss on the cheek before rushing for the door. "It was so good to see you again. Hopefully, the next time will be under better circumstances!"

Amy practically shoved her sister out of the doorway as she and Rick continued to glare at each other.

"I'm sorry," A voice croaked from the hall.

Rick turned to see Michonne standing at the mouth of her room. As she emerged, his heart sank, she looked horrible.

In the five days since he'd seen her last, the assortment of bruises she'd collected had had time to bloom across her skin and the swelling on her face had grown to its full measure. He recognized it because it had happened to him as well. The day after, he'd looked roughed up and ragged, three days later he looked ravaged and black and blue. Even looking at himself in the mirror that morning had meant staring into a nearly unrecognizable face. One dotted with small angry cuts across the entirety of his face with reddish-purple bruises under both eyes, his swollen cheek, a rug-burn across his chin and one completely blown capillary in his right eye. He was even pretty certain he saw a patch of new grays popping out at his temples.

But if it was possible, Michonne looked worse as she limped to him down the dark hall. Her smile was lopsided due to the half closed eye, swollen cheek and split lip that she sported. Wearing a small cream-colored, sleeveless camisole, Rick could see all the complete handprints all over her arms from being constantly manhandled. But what made him grit his teeth in anger was the dozen, large, dark and angry bruises that lined her long neck where Shane had attempted to strangle her. He could see under the flimsy cotton that her rib cage and waist were bandaged as well. Her thighs and knees below the shorts she wore were an assortment of scratches and dark purple bruises. There was little surface on her body that he could see that was untouched by calamity. She wore a boot on one foot and a sling on the opposite arm that matched the one he had been forced to wear. Together, they actually looked like a couple of grossly misused bookends.

"A fine pair we are, huh?" She said hoarsely, straining her voice. She was apparently thinking the same thing as him as she looked him over too. "You look like you went a couple rounds with a heavyweight."

Michonne coughed at the strain of speaking. She put a hand to her throat as if she was trying to massage the sound out of it. Her voice was several octaves lower than her normal speaking voice and coarse as if she'd been rubbing her larynx with sandpaper. Looking at her then made Rick feel irrationally angry at no one in particular...or at least, no one he could do anything about. It had been days now and no matter how he tried, he still couldn't release the fury he felt. Looking at Michonne's injuries now that feeling grew larger and more absurdly frustrating in the absence of an outlet.

"Um? I think I just did. But what about you? You look like you've been mauled by a very angry bear," He replied sportingly trying to remember to focus on the here and now with Michonne.

She began to laugh before grabbing her side in pain, "Oh, I can't, I can't."

Rick came up to her and put his arm around her lower back guiding her over to her couch. As he held her close, he smelled the rosewater in her hair and the odd local stuff she liked to put on her skin that she told him was called shea butter. Rick closed his eyes briefly and inhaled the fragrant combination that was so distinctively hers.

"About that, Andrea's honestly not as awful as she can sometimes seem. You remember that about her, right?" Michonne said as she sat gingerly, assisted by his steadying arm. She looked up at him questioningly as Rick helped himself to a seat on the small armchair across from her.

"I seem to recall something like that...between moments when she and Shane weren't trying to kill each other."

She smiled thinly but Rick recognized instantly that he shouldn't have mentioned Shane's name.

"I'm so—"

Michonne shook her head to stop him from continuing.

"No, I'm sorry," She said looking into his eyes searching for something. "I promised you this would always remain between just us, but I needed her help. She and her father have a far greater reach—"

"'Chonne," She stopped abruptly when he spoke, waiting for his response. He was fine, and he said so. "I get it. And you aren't any more responsible for her than I was..."

He trailed off because he wasn't sure how much he believed that in his case. Maybe some part of what Andrea thought about him was right. But regardless, the fact of it was, he felt a bit of relief that Michonne wasn't bearing this immense weight alone. Everything about this angered and shamed him but nothing so much as how fragile she seemed. That _his friend_ had done this to her. The idea that she would then have to be alone during all this was unbearable.

So Rick was happy to find out now that she wasn't. He could live a thousand years and never be sorry enough about his best friend's behavior. So if tolerating a little shit from Andrea was the going price for Michonne's comfort, he'd pay it. And honestly, knowing this made a lot of things fall into place. Not just Andrea's attitude but also the seemingly thorough pervasiveness of their little conspiracy of silence now made sense.

"But are you okay?" He asked then trying to clear the air and also concerned he might have hurt her just by touching her.

"That's come to be a relative term," She smiled crookedly, still holding her neck as if to encourage to words out. "I'm not as okay as I will be in Atlanta in my bed at my M'dear's house next week."

Rick nodded. He'd felt a distinct hankering for Atlanta of late himself.

She sighed deeply picking lint off her light linen shorts and suddenly avoiding eye contact. "But I'm happier than I've been in days since I found out my departure date has been approved."

"I imagine." Rick tried to smile but struggled both because of the tightness around his injured mouth and also because there was absolutely nothing about that statement he could find to be happy about. He looked down at his hand sitting on his knee, searching for the right words to express himself.

Michonne seemed to sense his discomfort and started to speak. "I don't mean...I'm not saying that…"

Rick looked up as she struggled to see what she trying to articulate only to see tears forming in her eyes. The small smile that had begun to emerge morphed into something else. She held her throat as if she was drowning before a strangled sob broke forth.

Rick immediately came to her, jumping to his feet and looking down into her face. Silent tears slipped down her cheeks as she continued trying to speak without actually uttering a sound. He knelt before her placing his hand on her knee. "'Chonne, I understand. I gotta admit, I don't like it but I totally get it."

 _He did, though he didn't want to._

Being there, in Kisangani, without Maggie, without Carter, people who had been indelible parts of their community—and in that way, even without Shane as well— having to endure the stares and whispers and questions and constant flow of condolences...it was nearly intolerable. _So, he understood._ Walking into the Protection Coordination office, past the empty desks, talking with Carter's interim replacement, having to pack up Maggie and Shane's things with Kem and Clara had all been agonizing for Rick. The many dozens of eyes that were on him constantly as he did anything, eat, drink, talk, just _live_ , watching for a chink in his armor certainly didn't help either.

And of course, that would only, once again, have been magnified for Michonne, the focal point of the entire misadventure. _Rick got it._ He would have been horribly insensitive if he didn't. But again, he still didn't like it.

"I just have to get away from here. You understand that, don't you?" Michonne looked down into his face as he kneeled.

He nodded reassuring her, "I do."

"It's not personal."

 _But it felt exceedingly personal_.

Rick nodded again nevertheless. He watched Michonne struggle to marshal her emotions, distressed at how much pain she was so obviously in. She looked down at him and away as even more tears streamed down her face.

"I can't even look at you without thinking about all this. It's not deliberate. It's not even really about you...but I just can't." She looked directly into Rick's eyes again for a just moment then. He wiped some of the tears from her cheeks with his thumb before grabbing tissues from a half-empty box nearby and handing them to her.

 _What could he conceivably say to that?_ He wondered.

The words he had not gotten to say when they were in the Saviors camp and he'd been absolutely sure either he, she or the both of them were going die, bubbled to the surface again. He held his breath. _If he said them,_ He wondered then, _would she still leave? Could she? And would he have been able to let her?_

 _Did it really matter anyway?_

She had said to him at the time that she knew. _Did she really?_ Many questions suddenly swirled confusingly through Rick's mind. A lot of that night was becoming increasingly a blur, the side effects of the medication Clara had given him to sleep. He wouldn't have slept a wink otherwise, but it robbed him of a lot of the finer details of their escape. He was relieved he'd already told the facts for the record because what had actually happened was starting to coalesce into an amalgam with what they'd "said" happened. _Still, he remembered that._ He remembered he'd given her his heart and she'd acknowledged she held it. Though, he realized suddenly, that didn't necessarily mean the feeling was reciprocated…

"I really do understand, 'Chonne. I just wanted to see you before you left." He got to his feet awkwardly, breathing through his nose and heavily favoring one side painfully as he eased himself upright.

Michonne watched him with concern and took his hand before he could step away. "I-I want to tell you not to go," She admitted.

He paused and they just looked at each other. He noticed _, she might have wanted to but she didn't say it._ He squeezed her fingers then, releasing her hand. Michonne looked down at her feet while wiping away more tears.

"I'm flying out next Saturday myself so..." He trailed off not knowing what to say.

"Oh?" She looked up at Rick in surprise as he continued standing over her.

"Hersh asked me to, um, accompany her home."

"Yes, of course," She nodded, grimacing and obviously trying not to break into another crying jag at the mere mention of Maggie.

"Have you spoken to him?"

She shook her head shamefaced. "Is he okay?"

It was Rick's turn to shake his head, unable to articulate how horrible that conversation had been. He resisted his own set of tears. Hershel knew before Rick called, of course, but Rick had been the one to color in the lines...with lies.

"I'll see you at the funeral?" He asked after taking a moment to gather himself, helping her back to her feet as she reached for him.

"Uh, yeah, yes," Michonne nodded but she seemed suddenly distracted.

"I will?" Rick asked again because she somehow seemed uncertain. Although he couldn't imagine her not coming, she had already missed the memorial services there in Kisangani.

"Of course," She replied with far more of her usual steely certainty.

She followed him slowly to the door, limping on her big boot.

"We'll talk more then," Rick said.

"Yes, we will," Michonne confirmed nodding.

There was so much he wanted to say and he knew this would be his best chance to say it. At home, there would be Hershel and Lori and Carl and the many dozens of other people, all there to vie for their attention. There, they would never be alone. That's why he'd come here now. But even now with her standing just a few feet away he couldn't bring himself to say any of it.

 _It wasn't fair._

Not to her, definitely not to Lori...or Carl. Whatever feelings he might have had, whatever way he wished this could go, it wasn't practical or realistic. It was best to leave well enough alone. While he knew when she'd said she never wanted to see him again, that that was just the fatigue and sorrow talking. He had to acknowledge that there was some truth to it too. So if he were to now speak on his feelings, if he was to risk it, risk _them_ , by saying the words out loud, he would be throwing it all back in her face. To do that would be to destroy the relationship, the bond, they already had.

 _No_. _He wouldn't do that._

"Come here," She said gently to him then, pulling him by the arm into her embrace.

He came easily and they both laughed a little as they had to negotiate the hug with their matching arm-slings. With his hand behind her, he rubbed her back, pulling her body into himself and burying his head in the crook of her neck. Regardless of what she said or he was saying, this felt like the end, an end. _And it was._ Michonne was leaving the UN. She was leaving this life behind. For better or worse, a life they had shared for seven years. Even if they both retired back to America, back to Atlanta, Rick knew it would never be like this, like here, ever again.

Michonne put her hand delicately on the back of his neck and pressed her mouth against his ear. "Take care of yourself, Captain," She whispered.

He nodded with his head still resting against her jaw not wanting to release her. And they stood there like that for a long while.

"You have your ride to the airport? I can have Jim or Latif or one of the other guys run you over there. I can arrange that before I go," He said reluctantly letting her go. When he had, he turned and opened the front door, waiting for her response.

She smiled mildly, holding the door open for him. "Andrea took care of it already, but thanks."

"Oh well, okay." He sighed. "You going commercial?"

She nodded. "You?"

"Military transpo."

"Well, then you fly safe." She touched his face quickly with her fingertips as if memorizing the contours of his cheek and chin. "Shave _before_ you go."

Rick smiled, "Yes, Ma'am."

As he turned, he threw three fingers up above his head in salute and headed down the hall unable to look back.

* * *

June 1st 2011

Paces, Atlanta, Georgia

Rick shook out his umbrella in the open door before stepping into the vestibule.

It seemed oddly appropriate that it should be raining today. He handed his umbrella to the woman who'd answered the door and then stepped in and out of the way of others that were hustling in behind him doing the same thing. He pulled his dress hat off and stuffed it under his arm ruffling his hair a little. Though it was wet it was still the normal humid Georgia afternoon, and his formal uniform was hot as hell. He tugged at the bottom of his navy coat to straighten it. Despite doing nothing but getting out of his truck, he felt a bit disheveled.

"Rick," Lori said calling to him from the mouth of the great room. "Over here."

He looked up to see his wife was already situated in conversation in just the few short minutes it had taken him to find a parking space. She stood in her tasteful black dress, matching kitten-heels and neatly-coiffed brown bun, speaking with another UN wife. She beckoned him over with a wave of the hand, but he hesitated, looking around for someone. He held up a finger to indicate he needed a minute. _He actually needed several minutes._

 _He'd been in that house how many times?_ He tried to remember. _Countless._ It was near impossible to imagine Maggie never being around again to bound down the stairs to greet them or to shout loudly across the house as if it was a two-room shack. The Greene home had been like a second home to the Grimeses for countless years. They felt comfortable there. Case in point, Rick heard the sound of children giggling and footsteps on the second-floor landing and looked up to see Carl dashing behind a Greene cousin down the hall. He thought to call after his son but then thought better of it.

 _Someone should be attempting to enjoy the day, despite the weather, despite the occasion._ No one would blame children for that.

He continued through the large foyer toward Lori, walking past people milling all around. They cleared a small path for him, obviously intrigued or impressed by his dress blues. He looked around and saw a few other uniformed officers of various ranks and branches of the military. They each nodded at him in acknowledgment before returning to their conversations.

"Rick," Someone called to him suddenly. He looked around for the voice until he saw Beth.

Standing beside the colonnaded archway that separated the foyer from hallway to the kitchen. She looked solemn and pale, not like her normal fifteen-year-old self. He signaled Lori to indicate his diversion with a finger and she nodded in silent understanding. He came up to Beth and pulled her into a brief embrace that she seemed to endure rather than reciprocate.

"How you holding up?" He asked before stopping himself. "I bet a million people have asked you that today."

She nodded, "It's okay. I think unlike everyone else, you really want to know. You're doing the same thing probably, right?"

Rick looked down at her tucked under his shoulder and was impressed by how perceptive she was. _She was like her sister in that way._

He nodded.

"I feel awful," He admitted and Beth finally put her arms around him, leaning her head against his chest.

"Me too." She confided, tears coming to her eyes.

She held him close for a moment, squeezing before letting him go. "We need some help."

Rick released her and tugged on his coat again to pull it down.

"I'm at your disposal," he said following her down the hall. He dropped his hat on one of the bookshelves that lined the walls.

"It's Michonne's wine," She explained walking ahead of him.

"Oh?" Rick said casually but his heart raced.

He hadn't seen Michonne at the service or at the graveside. He actually exhaled heavily, relieved that she'd come after all. He'd been worried she wouldn't. In the days before, he'd debated calling her. He was only in town for another day and he'd not reached out to her and she hadn't reached out either. He'd thought that they could at least go out for some coffee or something before he had to fly back to the DRC.

He walked into the expansive kitchen looking around. Rick nodded politely at the three older women that were in there attending to various things. Beth led him around the large granite island in the center of the room, then walked around a large wooden crate on the floor, turning to face him.

"Do you think you can help us?"

He was confused, still not seeing Michonne anywhere. "Help you with what?"

"Help us get this open," Beth looked down at the crate.

Rick looked down at it strangely for a moment having the completely asinine thought that maybe Michonne was in the crate. "What?"

"Can you help us, son?" One of the women said throwing a dish towel over her shoulder and crossing her arms. "As you can see, we've ruined a few pieces of silverware trying to pry this open."

Rick looked at three badly-bent knives sitting discarded on the island.

"You want me to open this?"

The three women and Beth looked at him.

"Yes, son," One said slightly amused.

"Where is Michonne?" Rick asked, still not getting what was happening. "I thought she was here?"

"Nope," Beth said crossing her arms, mirroring the other women. "All she did was send this dumb wine."

"Elizabeth Anne Greene!" One of the women said appalled.

"That is a very nice vintage from your sister's favorite vineyard. Your friend spent a pretty penny for this," Another one of the women chastised her too.

"I would have preferred having her instead," Beth said under her breath.

Rick couldn't help feeling the same way.

 _Michonne hadn't come_.

She hadn't been at Shane's memorial either, though she could hardly be blamed for that. Though the only reason Rick and Lori had been there was to keep up the façade. In order to maintain his life as usual, Rick had been forced to create a story that made Shane a war hero, an unfortunate victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong moment. Taken out by a stray bullet to keep Michonne out of jail. The way he told it, Shane became a person intent on helping his fianceé rescue her best friend, to keep himself and his wife out of the line of inquiry. It infuriated Rick, if he thought on it too hard. Still, he gritted his teeth and did as Michonne asked, keeping this huge secret from everyone including Hershel, who was in the process of commissioning a painting of his daughter and her de facto murderer together, to place on his mantlepiece for all eternity. Through it all, however, Rick kept his mouth shut. Not to save himself, and not to really to save his wife, but because Michonne asked him to.

 _The least Michonne could have done was just show up!_ Rick grumbled to himself irritably.

Beth looked up at him expectantly.

"Well?" She said with typical teenaged, entitled obnoxiousness. She put her hands on her hips and shrugged at him as if to indicate she was waiting...impatiently.

Rick looked down at the closed crate. He couldn't help but think of it as a perfect metaphor for his life ever after. Sealed off to protect the precious things within.

"I think I have a crowbar in the back of my truck," He said finally, pulling off his dress coat and heading back out into the rain through the sliding-glass kitchen door.


	66. Chapter 66

***** **Author's Note** *****

Okay, I have to give you guys a big, HUGE apology. I know when you see this you're gonna be like, "WTF?!" Here's the story: I'm headed out on vacay for two update cycles. And this should have been my last update before I left (I should have said this in my last author's note). Unfortunately, I was a complete bum and didn't really work on it in preparation. (Le sigh) But _fortunately,_ what vacation means, besides lots of big alcoholic beverages and small bathing suits is plenty of time spent in airport lounges and on flights just sitting around. But it also means possibly dodgy internet access. So what I pledge to do is spend some time working on the next updates and updating where I can. I won't be able to tell you when however so for the next week or two expect updates on no particular schedule. (Meaning not necessarily Monday and Wednesday). I apologize for this, but I thank you guys for keeping me honest and motivated (through increasingly trying times...I know y'all know what I mean). Anyhoo, I dropped a little something —I don't even think it's a thousand words— below just because as I understand it, FanFic dotnet doesn't allow pure author's notes on the site, it's verboten. So this is not meant to be an update per se just a space holder for the chapter I owe you. Sorry guys.

8/5/15 04:28 CAT  
Medical Station Omicron, Rwanda

Michonne looked down as for the fourth or fifth time Rosita's arm clapped across her chest to stop her from moving forward.

"You could just say stop," She whispered to the sergeant irritably.

"Shush," Rosita whispered back with her own irritation holding a finger up to her lips. She pointed around as if to indicate that there could be people all around them.

She understood and agreed with Rosita's sense of caution but what Michonne saw was an empty hallway. It had been a collection of empty stairwells and hallways since they got away from the atrium upstairs. As far as she could tell, Ariane had been successful in her bid to lock people wherever they were when the alarm went off —likely for most of them, in bed. Michonne nearly said it until she saw a shadow move behind one of the frosted glass doors.

"I see you."

Michonne and Rosita both nearly jumped out of their skin. _It was Ngangabouka._ Michonne actually clutched her chest, his voice going through her. They both froze. If he was trapped and no one had come to retrieve him yet, Michonne realized she was right, Ariane's coup was underway.

They backed up against the opposite wall, nearly touching it.

"Women," He said suddenly as if he'd discovered something. "Only women would try to slink by."

It was Michonne's turn to put her hand on Rosita and a finger to her own lips as the woman began to step forward. Michonne shook her head and pulled her away silently.

"Little Bird? Ariane?" Ngangabouka guessed from behind the door. "If this is what I think it is, I'm gonna wring your gorgeous little neck."

Michonne and Rosita exchanged a look as they went up the hall cautiously. They continued slowly with their backs still hugging the opposite wall.

"MICHONNE!" He shouted when they were nearly a meter away.

Michonne felt on the verge of a heart attack at the sound of her name in Nganabouka's mouth. It sounded like the ferocious roar of a pissed off lion. Interestingly, Michonne had never heard him like that. Although she assumed he was like that all the time, Nganabouka had only ever spoken to her in mild tones. Even in moments when she knew her life was at stake, he'd only ever spoken softly to her. He'd never raised his voice. It was unnerving to hear it now.

She paused as Rosita took her wrist and tugged her on. 'Wait,' She mouthed at the sergeant.

"I guarantee I'm the devil you know," He said in a sing-songy way. From the sound, he must have been pressed up against the door as he spoke. His voice sounded like it was in the hallway with them in the strange acoustics of the facility.

Michonne acknowledged to herself the warning in that statement. No doubt in light of what they'd just discovered, she had little doubt this was true. _Who knew Ariane better than her husband/captor?_ Who better knew the full extent of what she was capable of than him? She knew what he was asking for too. _But Michonne wasn't that stupid, was she?_

She looked at Rosita, looking at her. Her face seemed to be asking Michonne the same question. Rosita frowned and shook her head.

"You won't survive this if Ariane has her way," He warned. "I can guarantee the safety of you and your friends."

Michonne made a mental note of the floor and door he was behind.

"Or is it you...what's the cute one with the missing hand's name?" He seemed to be asking himself. Michonne rolled her eyes resolved to move on. "Stacy? Tracy? Ugh. These names. Tasha?"

Rosita got to the next doorway. Through there and down the stairs would lead them into the residential part of the facility. She slid the card slowly through the card reader, as quietly as possible and then eased the locked door open as the cylinders fell into place.

"Tasha...no, Stacy, whatever. My wife is not a good idea for regime change. You know she's not gonna let your bosses out of here alive, right? He didn't chop off your common sense when the good Captain took your hand, did he? You know Michonne isn't safe."

The hairs rose on the back of Michonne's neck as he continued to speak...because she recognized that Ngangabouka was telling the truth.

"...That's why you all make it your business to bodyguard her. Because you know," Nganagbouka continued his pitch. "Let me out of here because I'm the only person that can keep her safe."

Rosita hustled Michonne through the door allowing it to close behind them on his voice.

"Only me, St- Tasha? Sasha. Sasha! I can help yo…"

His voice was finally gone as the doors closed. But not closing the door on Michonne's thoughts and not silencing the small voice in her head that said Ngangabouka was quite possibly telling the truth.


End file.
